Inviting your patients to the patient portal

If your patient records have moved to AesthetiClinic from an old system, you can invite your existing patients to set up their own online account: the patient portal. From there they can view their appointments, complete forms and book online.

What the invite does

The invite is a one-off email to each patient, letting them know their records have moved to your new system and inviting them to register. It is a service message, not marketing, and an account is entirely optional for them. The email links them to your registration page and walks them through it. Email needs to be set up for your account for invites to send; if it is not, the page will tell you and nothing goes out.

Sending invites in bulk

Go to Settings > Patient invites (only a clinic owner can send invites). You will see four figures at a glance: Active patients, Already registered, Already invited and Ready to invite.

1. Use Send a test to me first, to see exactly how the invite looks in your own inbox. This never emails any patients.
2. When you are happy, tick the confirmation box under Send the invites and click Send.

Only patients who are active, have a valid email address, and have not already registered or been invited are included. Sending is safe to repeat: nobody is ever emailed twice, so you can run it again later to reach newly-added patients. Invites go out in batches of 100, one batch an hour. If you have more patients than that, press the button again after an hour and the next 100 go; the page tells you how many are still waiting. This pacing is deliberate: every clinic's email shares one sending reputation, and a burst of hundreds of invites in a minute is what makes your own appointment reminders land in junk the following week.

Inviting one patient from their record

For a single patient, a phone enquiry you have just added, say, or someone you created by hand at reception, there is a quicker way. Open their record and look beside their contact details for Invite to portal. One click sends the same invite email under your clinic's name.

The button looks after the edge cases for you: it shows Portal account active if they already have a login, Invited with the date if an invite has already gone, and it will not send to a patient with no email address or one you have switched off from receiving messages. Nothing can be double-sent, whichever way an invite went out.

What happens when a patient completes setup

The patient registers using the same email address you sent the invite to, which is how the system recognises them and links their existing records. They receive a 6-digit code to confirm it is them, then choose a password. That is all it takes.

Once registered, they can see their upcoming and past appointments, complete any forms you have sent, and book or rearrange visits online. For the full picture of what they can do, see What patients can do in the patient portal.