Online Booking Walkthrough - Regular Appointments

Patients occasionally aren't quite sure how to book appointments (including regular, urgent, and physical health exams) with their physician. This post will walk through the steps with screenshots exemplifying what to do and where to click.

Step 1 - The first step is always to have a new patient intake appointment with your physician. Only once you've had this appointment will you be provided by email a link to book subsequent follow-up appointments with your doctor. Please bookmark the link for future reference although this search tool is available if you have lost the link.

Step 2 - When you wish to book a regular appointment with your physician, access the link provided to you.  You'll be taken to a page similar to the following:

Step 3 - Towards the bottom, you will be presented with a number of different appointment types. These will differ from physician to physician.  Select the type of appointment that is appropriate for your circumstances.  In most circumstances, "Regular Visit" will be the correct choice.  

Step 4 - Once you select from the options, the webpage will display a booking form such as the below:

Step 5 - Use the booking form to book your appointment.  You'll need to choose a date and time for your appointment, and also complete the form questions.  A completed form appears as follows.  

Step 8 - Once you've completed the form, click the "Send request" button.  A login screen will appear, such as the following. Type in the email address that you had previously selected when creating your booking account (see step 9 of this walkthrough) and your password.

Step 9 - Once you enter your credentials, click "Login".  Your booking will proceed, and you will be displayed a green confirmation box as follows:

You'll also receive an email confirmation to the email address that you provided the first time you used the username (see step 9 of this walkthrough).

Online Booking Walkthrough - New Patient Intake Appointment

Patients occasionally aren't quite sure how to book their new patient intake appointment.  This post will walk through the steps with screenshots exemplifying what to do and where to click.

Step 1 - The first step is always to register here.  Only after a patient registers will they receive by email a link to book a new patient intake appointment with a particular doctor. This email will have the subject "Magenta Health - Invitation for Scheduling Patient Intake Appointment"

Step 2 - Once you receive the email, read through the email, and there will be a section that states the following:

With this in mind, you have been assigned to [doctor] and new patient intake appointments can now be scheduled, as follows:

1. Visit the following link: [link]

2. You will need to register for an account as part of the booking workflow....

Step 3 - Click on the link provided, and you'll be taken to a page that appears similar to the below:

Step 4 - There's a bit of overlap with the invitation email, but we strongly recommend that you read through this webpage carefully.

Step 5 - If you're ready to schedule your appointment, look towards the bottom of the page. It first asks you how many family members, including yourself, you are booking for.  If you're booking for just yourself, select 1, if you're booking for you and a spouse, select 2, if you're booking for yourself and two children, select 3, etc...

Step 6 - Once you select from the options, the webpage will display a booking form such as the below:

Step 7 - Use the booking form to book your appointment.  You'll need to choose a date and time for your appointment, and also complete the form questions and check off the required check-boxes.  A completed form appears as follows:

Step 8 - Once you've completed the form, click the "Send request" button.  A login screen will appear where you can choose the option "Create an Account".  

Step 9 - Once you have clicked on "Create an Account", you'll need to provide a "Display Name", password and email address of your choosing then click the "Register" button. This process provides you with an appointment booking account which you can use for all future bookings.  Please note that in the future you will be able to use your email address to login.

Step 10 - After you have properly created an account, you will be displayed a green confirmation box as follows:

You'll also receive an email confirmation to the email address that you provided at Step 9.

I have been referred to Magenta Health by the Health Care Connect service, what do I do next?

Health Care Connect helps Ontarians who are without a family health care provider (family doctor or nurse practitioner) to find one. People without a family health care provider are referred to a family doctor or a nurse practitioner who is accepting new patients in their community.

Magenta Health is part of this program as part of our commitment to help service the medical needs of our community. 

Being referred by HCC does not automatically mean that you are a patient of the suggested doctor. Individuals still have to register via our website and the suggested physician may not be available when the registration is processed.

Thanks, and we look forward to meeting soon!

A Belated Update - Photos & New Patient Appts

Although some walls still need to be painted and we can't wash our hands in the washroom quite yet, we're just days away from the completion of construction. It's somewhat hard to believe (since the photos below suggest - at least to us - that there's quite a lot of work left to do) but that's what we're told!

We'll share more once we're officially open for business, but in the meantime, we've started to schedule new patient intake appointments.

Only a few dozen invitations have been sent out so that we have a opportunity to confirm our electronic systems are working properly. Once we're confident everything is working well, we'll be sending everyone else who registered with us a personalized email with information on how to schedule their intake appointment.

In the meantime, at least for us, it's interesting to look back and see where we started from. Here was the first mock-up of the space that we drew ourselves after we visited the unit back in the middle of 2013!


Learning something new: Off-Lease Computers Make Amazing Thin Clients

For those who don't know, thin clients are computers used primarily to connect to some other computer where the actual "computing" takes place on the remote computer.

We need thin clients because we're using a remote desktop session host based IT infrastructure. Sounds complicated, but it'll help our physicians see patients more effectively and efficiently (well, that's the promise anyways).

So what did we learn today? It's amazing the value you get from off-lease computers. These are computers leased by large corporations for a few years, and then returned as "obsolete" even though, in practice, they are still fully usable.  They aren't the fastest or prettiest machines on the block anymore, but as thin clients, they are more that adequate (frankly, some of these off-lease computers are comparable to many people's home desktop, and blow most "special-purpose" thin client machines out of the water).  They even come with fully licensed versions of Windows, which, at $150, is oftentimes more expensive than these off-lease desktops!

Here are thin clients 3, 4, 5, and 6 (of 30) being tested on our highly sophisticated test bench (a.k.a. a dining table).

Construction Update #2 - Walls, walls, walls everywhere!

An amazing amount of work has been done to transform the space into a clinic these last couple weeks.  Indeed, there are steel studs everywhere now, and the drywall is starting to go up in certain places.

This third photo is particularly interesting.  For scale, the ceiling here is 16' height, and the opening is 12' x 5'

Online Booking

One of the ways our clinic seeks to offer our patients an improved experience is by offering real-time online bookings.

What we mean by this is that all appointments will be available to be scheduled online, with our online schedule fully up-to-date at all times.  For example, if a patient cancels an appointment, that timeslot will become available to other patients immediately.

Our hope is that this system will enable our patients to have better and more convenient access to their physicians.

Here's an example of how our online booking system will work.