When a patient provides the information required to check-in (gender and/or date of birth), our software will use this information to match against an appointment within a certain time frame in the clinical system - this is the arrival window.

The default arrival window is 30 minutes before an appointment is due and up to 10 minutes after an appointment should have taken place that a patient can successfully check-in using the touchscreen.

You can amend these times to suit your surgery's requirements.  To do so, please go to the Settings section in your Engage Touch Console

If the system cannot find a patient matching the details entered within the arrival window set, Engage Touch will instruct the patient to go to reception.

Please note that patients can only arrive for multiple appointments if those appointments fall within the set arrival window.  

For example, if a patient has appointments at 9.20am and 9.40am and uses the touchscreen at 9am, they will only be marked as arrived for their 9.20am, as their 9.40am is more than 30 minutes after they are checking-in.

It's therefore pertinent to consider how far apart multiple appointments are booked at your practice when setting the arrival window.  NB: Please note that when you extend the arrival window, it will take longer for our software to scan your appointment book (as there's a larger amount of data to check).  The patient will see an egg timer on screen and therefore know their request is being actioned.

For more information about multiple appointments, please see: https://support.engagehealth.uk/support/solutions/articles/48001080182-patients-with-multiple-appointments