Purpose

To meet strategic objectives to improve access to GP care, the Appointment Management(AM) APIs enable consumer system administrative and clinical end-users to more effectively book and manage GP Practice appointments held in any of the four GP Principal Practice systems. The deployment of the APIs within Patient Apps, to support Patient direct access, is envisaged for a later Phase.

Example Scenarios

• Administrative staff at a GP Practice can book an appointment on behalf of a patient
• Administrative staff at a GP Extended Access Hub can book an appointment on behalf of a patient at any of its federated GP practices
• An Urgent Care 111 Call Centre handler or Triage Clinician can book, cancel or view appointments on behalf of a patient at the patient’s registered or federated GP Practices or Extended Access Hubs
• A patient will be able to book, cancel or view their GP appointments via a GP Connect-enabled App
• Administrative staff and Clinicians at a range of other care settings, e.g. A&E, Physio, Social and Community services, will be able to book, view or cancel a GP appointment on behalf of the patient

GP Practice Appointment Slot Availability

GP Practices need to control access to their appointment book by external organisations and it is therefore expected that Provider systems will in the first instance enable Practice users to designate their schedules/slots as bookable by GP Connect, thereby ensuring that only these slots are returned in response to a request.

FoT Care Setting Deployments

The following FoT deployments are being progressed:

Care Setting 1: Within GP Federations

Enabling a GP Practice or Appointment Hub, to book, amend, cancel, or view a patient’s in-hours or extended hours appointments at the patient’s registered GP Practice or another GP practice within the same federation.

Care Setting 2: From UC Call Centres to GP Practices – In-Hours, Extended Hours Appointments

The requirement to support the use of the GP Connect capability for Unscheduled Care by Urgent Care (UC) Services - i.e. UC Call Centres booking and managing appointments into GP Practices – has been accommodated where possible in the API design. The Call Centre will retrieve and select In-Hours or Extended Hours appointments for booking/managing at either:

• the Patient’s registered GP Practice

• GP Practices federated with the Patient’s registered GP Practice

• a GP Practice within the vicinity of the Patient’s geographic location – e.g. when the Patient is on holiday

API Use Cases

The following individual API calls are used by consumers to implement the appointment management capability:

• Retrieve a patients appointments
• Search for free slots
• Read an appointment
• Book an appointment
• Amend an appointment
• Cancel an appointment

Examples of Consumer Appointment Management Sessions

The use of the individual API calls listed above by consumers to fulfill business processes is illustrated, with particular focus on the booking of an appointment. See Appointment Consumer Sessions Illustrated

Profiled FHIR Resources

Please refer to the Appointment Management FHIR Resources page for details of the FHIR profiles utilised for the Appointment Management capability.

SPINE Interactions

The Appointment Management capability message set includes the following set of Spine interactions: