Comprehensive User Manual: Online Patient Appointment System for XYZ

This document is a comprehensive user manual for an online patient appointment system designed for a healthcare facility. It details the system's features, including patient and admin access, the home page interface, and the appointments page where patients can schedule appointments, view doctor schedules, and make payments. The manual also covers appointment management, including cancellation procedures, and provides troubleshooting advice for common issues such as connectivity problems and server overloads. References to relevant research papers are included, highlighting the system's role in improving patient management and reducing waiting times. The manual emphasizes the importance of security measures like 2-factor authentication and the use of digital certificates for secure transactions. The admin can access the patient list and schedule to get more information on the patient to prepare for the treatment.

Running head: ONLINE APPOINTMENT SYSTEM MANUAL 1
Online Appointment System Manual
(Author’s name)
(Institutional Affiliation)

ONLINE APPOINTMENT SYSTEM MANUAL 2
User Manual
Patient Appointment System
Group Members
XXX YYY
AAA BBB
CCC DDD
Client: XYZ health care facility
Patient Appointment System
The patient appointment system is a software system designed to help the health care
facility with its scheduling concerns. Through the system, patients are able to schedule
appointments with doctors and by doing so significantly reduce the long waiting times that they
have to undergo while they are at the hospital (White, & Pike, 2014). The system will also
provide for better patient management as the doctors will be able to obtain information regarding
the patient before even he/she visits the hospital (Finkelstein et al., 2017). This allows for the
doctor to better prepare him/herself to attend to the patient. This manual provides an in-depth
overview of the different aspect of the patient management system and how they work.
Initial User Details for Admin are:
User Name: 1234
Password: admin

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Access
To access the PAS the patient needs to visit the health care facilities webpage, and enter
their user name and corresponding password in the patient log in panel. New patients who do not
have an account with the health care facility can create one by providing their details in the sign
up panel and confirming the sign up process by clicking an email that will be sent to them. The
admin is able to access the system by using his User ID and password in the admin log in panel.
To enhance security for the system, log in for the admin is protected by a 2 factor authentication
mechanism. 2-factor authentication protocols serves to enhance the security standards of the
system (Gupta, & Denton, 2008).
1. Main window Home Page
Patient
The home page is the landing age that the user accesses after the log in process. It is also
the primary page from where the user can be able to access the different services offered by the

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health care facility like making appointments, obtaining prescription information and accessing
the payment status (Sauré, & Puterman, 2017).
Admin
After logging in to the system, the admin is taken to a home page that is different from
that of the patient. In home page have links that take admin to a patient list page, schedule page,
and new sign up page.
2. Appointments page
The appointments page is the page where the patient reviews the doctor’s schedule and is
able to make an appointment based on the schedule. The key components found in the
appointment page are the available doctors and their areas of expertise, the time schedule of the
doctors indicating when a patient can make an appointment and the cost of scheduling an
appointment with a doctor and an efficient payment method (Jaival et al., 2015).

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In this page, the patient is able to identify the doctor whose services best fits his/her needs.
Review the schedule of the doctor to know his hours of operation. In this page, the patient is then
able schedule an appointment of when he/she would like to visit the doctor. The patient then
proceeds to pay through the use of either digital payment services like PayPal or through a wire
transfer. After the payment the patient is provided with a digitally created certificate that
confirms the payment. Digital certificates provide a secure mechanism of authenticating that a
process took place (Langley, 2015). A short message and email message confirming the
payments are also sent to the patient’s phone and email respectively.

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Admin
The admin and other doctors are able to view the patients who have made appointments
by reviewing the Schedule page. This page will provide them with information on the patients
name and the time he scheduled the appointment. The admin can be able to obtain more
information on the patient through the patient list page where he/she can be able to navigate to
the exact page where the patient is. By navigating to that page the doctor will be able to obtain
information on the patient that he/she can use to prepare for the treatment.
Appointment Management
After making the appointment, the patient has the liberty to cancel it at any time he/she
deems fit. To do this, the patient logs in to the appointments page, and clicks on the cancel
appointment button. By clicking on the button, the patient would be taken to the digital
certificate that was created upon making of the certificate and a prompt will request him/her to
choose whether to destroy the certificate or not. If the patient chooses to destroy the certificate

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the appointment will be canceled and if he chooses not to destroy the certificate the appointment
won’t be canceled. Once the appointment is canceled a message will be sent to his or her mobile
phone ad email notifying him/her of the certificates destruction.
Trouble shoot
Being a webpage in case the user runs into any challenges using the system, he can proceed to
reload the website and repeating the process from where the challenges arose.
Causes of problems and Potential solutions
Some of the potential causes of problems with the system include internet speed, lack of
connectivity, server overload and the user inputting wrong details. Poor internet speed can result
in failure of the system to establish connectivity with the server. This problem usually occurs in
areas with low internet speed. One way through which the user can resolve the issue is by using
another internet provider. Another way through which the problem can be solved is through
reloading the speed of the internet. Lack of connectivity is also another cause of concern for the
system. Lack of connectivity would result in failure of the system to connect with the server. To
resolve this problem the user should obtain internet connectivity. Challenges with server
overload apply when to many users are pinging the site at the same time. This challenge can lead
to drag in the systems operations. One way through which the admin can resolve this issue is by
expanding the server capacity or segmenting server operations in phases.

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References
White, M. B., & Pike, M. C. (2014). Appointment systems in out-patients' clinics and the effect
of patients' unpunctuality. Medical Care, 133-145.
Langley, A. (2015). Maintaining digital certificate security. Google Online Security Blog.
Sauré, A., & Puterman, M. L. (2017). Advance Patient Appointment Scheduling. In Markov Decision
Processes in Practice (pp. 245-268). Springer International Publishing.
Finkelstein, S. R., Liu, N., Rosenthal, D., & Poghosyan, L. (2017). When open access might not work:
Understanding patient attitudes in appointment scheduling. Health Care Management Review.
Jaival, S., Kallepalli, S. R., Kumar, V. S., & Vejju, H. (2015). Appointment Scheduling System.
Gupta, D., & Denton, B. (2008). Appointment scheduling in health care: Challenges and
opportunities. IIE transactions, 40(9), 800-819.

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