April: What's new in DrDoctor?
April, 2026
We've been busy making lots of exciting optimisations and improvements across the Hospital Portal!
Healthcare doesn’t stand still, and neither do we. This is your regular update on improvements, fixes and new features - a regular window into what’s changing and what’s coming next. No jargon, no noise. Just the updates that matter to you. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out.
Scheduling
Booking Request Screen: Improved Performance & Consistency
Product: Scheduling
Feature: The Booking Request screen in the staff portal now displays requests from the past 30 days, keeping the view focused on active, actionable items. This brings all request types into a consistent display window, improving screen load times and making it easier for booking teams to manage their workload. PIFU requests are unaffected and will continue to display as before.
Benefit: Booking teams get a faster, cleaner view of outstanding requests: no more scrolling through old, already-actioned items to find the ones that need attention. No action is required from trusts.
DNA Sorting Fix in Appointment Confirmations
Product: Scheduling (Appointment Confirmations)
Feature: We've fixed an issue where patients were not being sorted correctly by DNA risk on the Appointment Confirmations screen. The sort order now accurately reflects each patient's clinic-level DNA ranking, and we've also cleared cached data that could cause the screen to display stale information.
Benefit: Staff using the Appointment Confirmations screen can now trust that patients are listed in the correct DNA risk order, making it easier to prioritise confirmation activity and focus efforts on the patients most likely to not attend. No action is required from trusts.
Scheduling: Reliability & Stability Improvements
Product: Scheduling
Feature: We've shipped several behind-the-scenes improvements to the reliability of the scheduling platform over the past two months, including:
- Patient rescheduling during BST: resolved an issue where patients rebooking an appointment during British Summer Time could see an error page, even though their reschedule had completed successfully. Patients now see the correct confirmation.
- Clock change handling: scheduling communications are no longer affected by the UK clocks changing. This was previously a manual process that could cause timing inconsistencies in notifications; it's now fully automated.
- Rescheduling error recovery: In the rare event that a rescheduling attempt partially fails, patients are now guided through a recovery flow rather than being left with no way to self-serve.
- Duplicate appointment prevention: fixed an edge case that could result in a duplicate appointment being created during rescheduling.
- Integration monitoring: the System Status page in the staff portal now includes live monitoring of automated scheduling activity (bookings, cancellations, reschedules, and slot searches), helping us identify and resolve issues proactively.
Benefit: These changes improve the day-to-day reliability of automated scheduling and rescheduling for both patients and staff. Patients are less likely to encounter confusing error screens, and trust teams benefit from better monitoring and fewer manual workarounds. No action is required from trusts.
Hybrid Clinics
Product: Pathways/Workflows
Feature name: Email Staff Node
Feature: Email Staff Node: Workflows can now send emails directly to staff using the new Staff Email node. Previously, there was no way to notify staff from within a Workflow, so staff had to manually check the Staff Portal to spot patients who needed follow-up. For example, if a patient hadn't completed a form, the trust would only find out by checking and chasing. Now, an email can be sent automatically with details of who needs following up.
Benefit: Staff only need to act on exceptions rather than monitoring every patient, saving manual checks and time. Trusts can confidently scale pathways that involve patient action without scaling the staff effort to oversee them.
Feature name: New Tokens in Workflow Messages
Feature: New Tokens in Workflow Messages — Two new tokens are now available for use in Workflow communications:
- Date of birth — can be added to patient messages via the Message Personalise drop-down in the Staff Portal.
- Patient MRN — can be included in staff-facing emails and in patient communication on request (configurable by DrDoctor staff).
For patients, including date of birth helps confirm they're being contacted correctly, building trust in the messages they receive. For staff, including the MRN means patients can be looked up in other systems straight from a notification, without manual searching.
MRN can be included in staff-facing emails and in patient communication upon request.
Feature name: Immediate Workflow Progression on Form Submission.
Feature overview Workflows can now progress immediately when a patient submits a form, rather than waiting for a fixed delay.
Benefit: Previously, if we wanted to give the patient time to complete the form, Pathways would have to wait for a specified period before progressing, even if the patient had completed the form.
In pathways where patients typically complete forms within hours or a couple of days, this could reduce end-to-end workflow time from weeks to days.
Feature name Multiple Form Assignment in a Single Message
Feature: Multiple Form Assignment in a Single Message. Workflows can now assign more than one form to a patient at the same time, so a single message can cover multiple forms. The form assignment interface in the Staff Portal has also been redesigned to make building these steps faster and clearer. Previously, where a pathway needed several forms completed, each one had to be sent in its own message, meaning patients received a string of separate messages for what was really one task.
Benefit: Patients receive fewer messages for the same clinical task, lowering messaging volume and cost for trusts. Pathway builds are quicker to set up and easier to maintain, particularly for more complex clinical journeys with multiple forms.
Letters & Messaging
Digital Letters: Cleaner Letter Notifications - No More Repeated Words!
Product: Patient Portal & Notifications
Feature: Notification copy for letter types has been tidied up so patients no longer see awkward phrasing like "New clinical letter letter" in their notifications or portal.
Benefit: Patients receive clearer, more professional-looking notifications that are easier to read and understand, reducing confusion when they're notified about important clinical correspondence. This means if you have letters in your config that are called 'Clinical Letter', we will no longer add the word 'letter' to the notification. Conversely, if you have letters in your config that have a letter type of 'Clinical', we will add the word 'letter' to make this clearer for patients.
Direct Messaging: Instant MRN Validation When Sending Direct Messages
Product: Direct Messaging
Feature: When creating a Direct Message, the system now immediately flags any incorrect patient MRN entered in the form and prevents the message from sending until all identifiers are valid.
Benefit: Staff no longer have to manually cross-reference sent reports to work out which patients weren't contacted successfully. Errors are caught upfront, saving time and ensuring every intended patient receives their message.
Insight Hub
Insight Hub: Reschedule Rate Reporting
Product: Insight Hub (Appointments and Automated Booking reports)
Feature: Two new metrics are now available in your Appointments and Automated Booking reports: the volume of appointments where at least one reschedule occurred, and the reschedule rate as a percentage of total appointments.
Benefit: Understanding how often appointments are rescheduled gives a clearer picture of demand management and patient behaviour.
Insight Hub: Volume Health trackers
Product: Insight Hub (Assessments and Digital PIFU Reports)
Feature: A new "Volume Health" page has been added to both the Assessments and PARS reports, showing form assignments and patient volumes over time, broken down by specialty and scenario/service
Benefit: It's now easy to spot when a scenario, form, or service has stopped being active, whether due to a new clinic code, a lapsed engagement, or a technical issue. Teams can identify and resolve gaps quickly rather than discovering them weeks later.
Insight Hub: Smart Date Filters
Product: Insight Hub
Feature: Date sliders in reports now adjust automatically based on your filter selections. When you filter by a specific specialty, clinic or category the date range shown will reflect only the dates relevant to that selection.
Benefit: No more scrolling through months of empty dates after applying a filter, the date range updates dynamically, saving time and reducing the chance of selecting an unhelpful window.
Coming Early May! Insight Hub: Cancellation & Reschedule Notices
Product: Insight Hub (Appointment Notifications Report)
Feature: The Overview and Send Rate pages of the Appointment Notifications report now include volumes for cancellation and reschedule notices, alongside existing reminder and confirmation data.
Benefit: Your team now has a complete view of all appointment notification activity in one place, making it easier to understand the full communications journey and spot any gaps. This will be available in the Insight Hub from early May.
We'd love to hear your feedback!
We're always looking for new ways to improve and if you have any feedback, please reach out to your Transformation Manager or contact us at support@drdoctor.co.uk.
