What is Advanced Clinic Booking?
Advanced Clinic Booking is a clinic-level tool that supercharges existing online booking capabilities with a suite of new features. At its core, ACB allows patients to find availability based on the type of appointment they need, not the provider they want to see. This is especially helpful when the type or timing of an appointment matters more than which specific provider the patient sees, such as acute and episodic care, after-hours clinics, team-based models, or walk-ins.
This paradigm shift in the booking flow makes it easier for patients to quickly find care while reducing the administrative burden on staff. Keep reading to see how clinics are already making the most of these new tools.
ACB Features Include:
- Group multiple schedules into single option for patients with team-based booking
- Display the first-available time slot based on appointment type
- Evenly distribute bookings across providers automatically
- Provide one-time booking links (coming soon)
How Clinics are Using Advanced Clinic Booking
1
Make it easy for patients to book flu shots, tests, and other high-volume services
Acute and episodic care clinics are one of the most natural fits for Advanced Clinic Booking. For years, clinics have used Ocean Online Booking to support services like flu vaccination clinics, but Advanced Clinic Booking simplifies this workflow even further.
For appointments such as vaccines, injections, or minor procedures, patients don’t need to think specifically about who they’re booking with, only that they need a specific type of appointment. Advanced Clinic Booking removes this friction by allowing patients to book by appointment type, while Ocean works to assign the appointment to the appropriate provider behind the scenes. This makes it easier to offer same-day appointments, improve timely access for acute concerns, and reduce gaps in delivering care.
By removing barriers to booking and simplifying navigation across the booking process, clinics can improve timely access for acute concerns while still supporting the continuity of care, all with much less administrative burden.
2
Simplify scheduling for after-hours and on-call care
For family health teams (FHTs) that operate after-hours clinics, the goal is to keep care in-house while still offering patients a realistic alternative when their family doctor isn’t available. Without a clear option, patients may turn to external walk-in clinics simply because it’s more convenient, creating challenges for both the continuity of care and funding.
With Advanced Clinic Booking, FHTs can guide patients to the right type of care at the right time. Based on the urgency of the appointment type the patient selects, they can be shown availability with their own family doctor, the after-hours clinic, or both.
When first-available booking is enabled, patients can immediately see if they can be seen sooner through the after-hours clinic and book accordingly. This keeps appointments within your care team, reduces unnecessary outside usage, and makes after-hours access clearer and more convenient for patients without compromising care.
3
Booking that works for teaching clinics and other team-based care
In academic and team-based settings, online booking needs to support both the continuity of care and clinical training. Since care is often delivered by a broader team of physicians, residents, medical students, and locums, clinics don’t want patients to book solely with their family provider since it makes it harder to balance the learning opportunities and appointment volume.
Advanced Clinic Booking solves this issue by grouping all the team members into a group schedule, allowing appointments to be evenly distributed across everyone. Patients can still book the care they need, but in an environment that support teaching and training.
It also doesn’t have to be all or nothing when it comes to which appointments you want to make available. As product familiarity grows, clinics can add services as needed.
4
Improve your walk-in with smoother clinic flow and better patient care
For walk-in clinics, patients are used to showing up early, waiting in line, and hoping to be seen. This can be frustrating and difficult to manage alongside their own schedules. Meanwhile, clinic staff are handling intake on arrival and manually assigning patients to the next available providers. With Ocean, walk-in clinics can bring this entire workflow online.
Patients book an appointment in advance, complete intake forms as part of the booking process, and now know exactly when to come in, eliminating the unnecessary waiting game. Behind the scenes, Ocean syncs the intake notes into the patient chart and distributes appointments across the provider schedules, reducing the need for manual triage and note taking.
Accepting new patients at your walk-in? Ocean can even create new patient charts in the EMR at the time of booking, making walk-ins even easier to manage.
One-time booking links coming soon!
For specialists, diagnostic centres, and other requisition-based services, traditional online booking might not always be the right fit. Since patients are only seen a few times and at very specific points in their care, giving patients ongoing access to a full schedule can create confusion and unnecessary bookings.
One-time booking links solve this by allowing clinics to invite patients to book using a secure, single-use link. Clinics control when booking is available and which appointments can be booked, while patients still get the convenience of choosing a time that works for them. It’s a simple way to balance patient experience and reduce reliance on phone calls and manual appointment coordination.
What clinics are saying
We absolutely love it, and the clients love it too. We’re using multiple booking variations for services like TB skin tests and vaccines, and they’re all working perfectly.
– Student Health Services
Ocean helped evenly distribute urgent access appointments across our providers. We no longer see patients gravitating toward one schedule over another.
– Primary care practice
ACB has been a game-changer for our clinics. We used to spend valuable time manually assigning appointments from the walk-in schedule to the right provider—a process that was not only inefficient but also prone to errors.
A special thank you to the clinics that participated in our Early Access program! Your insights played a direct role in shaping these features, and many of the workflows shared below reflect the innovative uses you have already put into practice.
Designed for real-world care models
Advanced Clinic Booking is already helping clinics offer better access while reducing administrative burden, and we’re excited to see how it continues to evolve!
