June, 2026

We've been busy making lots of exciting optimisations and improvements across DrDoctor!

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

Product: Video 📹

Feature: Scheduled video appointments now have waiting rooms.

Benefit: Waiting rooms can now be switched on at the provider level in the Scheduling features page in the Staff Portal. This is only available at the provider level at the moment, but it means that waiting rooms can now be switched on for clients.

Please note: only video appointments made after the switched has been toggled will have the waiting room added. All clients are defaulted to off, so no waiting rooms, until the toggle has been flipped.

Hybrid Pathways / Workflows

Feature: Pathway maps now show how many patients are at each stage.

Benefit: Open a pathway's Workflow tab and each step displays a live patient count, so your team can see where patients are across the whole pathway at a glance, without checking patients one by one.

Feature: See which patient lists are attached to a workflow trigger.

Benefit: Click a Referral or Enrolment trigger in the workflow builder and a side panel shows the patient lists feeding that node, each linking straight to the list itself. This makes it much easier to understand what is driving a pathway without going hunting.

Feature: Workflows can now wait for a patient's start date before beginning.

Benefit: Pathways/Workflows now respect patient list start dates. "Trigger on Start Date" can be configured by DrDoctor. With it on, patients added with a future start date won't begin on the pathway until that date arrives, and their timeline shows they are enrolled but delayed until then. This means you can build up patient lists in advance and trust each journey to start on the day you intended. Leave the option off and workflows start immediately, exactly as before.

Please note: changing a patient's start date after they have been added has no effect on an already-enrolled or waiting workflow. To reschedule, remove the patient from the list and re-add them with the new date.

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.

May, 2026

We've been busy making lots of exciting optimisations and improvements across DrDoctor!

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. 

Advanced Forms / DrDoctor Forms DD Forms

DrDoctor Image hosting DD Forms 

Feature: Images can now be uploaded to DrDoctor for hosting.

Benefit: No requirement for a third-party image hosting service, dramatically increasing the speed of form creating and updating. Trust hosted image functionally remains as-is. 

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Email, Date, and Phone number field types.

Feature: Three new field types (phone, email, date) are now available when building forms. Also available in writeback. 

Benefit: Data quality at point of capture baked into form responses. Ease of use improvements for patients as the fields can be autocompleted by platform native tooling. 

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Conditional field logic based on calculation results. DD Forms

Feature: Forms can now show or hide fields dynamically based on the result of a calculation as the patient completes the form, extending the existing conditional logic (which only supported direct field values) to include calculated values.

Benefit: Unlocks smarter, more dynamic forms (e.g. scoring tools that reveal follow-up questions when a threshold is crossed), reducing clinician burden and improving the patient experience by only surfacing relevant questions.

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Post-submission message in Forms DD Forms 

Feature: Forms can now be configured with an optional message that appears after a patient submits the form. The message supports free text and links, and is also available in the NHS App.

Benefit: Gives patients useful next steps at the point of completion, such as further instructions, reassurance, or links to related services and resources, without the risk of patients leaving the form before submitting to find that information elsewhere.

Trust action: Update any forms with messaging that's better suited post-submission into the post-submission message.

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.

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.

March, 2026

Short & sweet, but even more exciting improvements and updates are on the way!

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.

📨 Appointment Cancellation Notification Message Update 📨

Feature overview: The cancellation notification message sent via SMS and Email has been updated for appointments where a booking team is present. The phrase "If you have not heard anything in the next few days" has been removed, so the message now reads: "If you have further questions, please contact the booking team on [booking team number]." This change applies to SMS and Email notifications only: the NHS App notification message and appointments without a booking team assigned are unaffected.

Why we built it: The previous wording implied patients should wait a number of days before contacting the booking team, which could cause confusion and unnecessary delays in rebooking. Removing this created a clearer, more direct message that better supports timely patient action following a cancellation.

Expected benefit / how we'll measure success: Patients receive a clearer call to action, reducing potential confusion about when it is appropriate to contact the booking team. We would welcome feedback from Trust booking teams on whether this change has any impact on inbound patient contact following cancellations.

Coming soon

🧪Test Results 🧪

Work has kicked off to develop a digital test results product, which will allow patients to view their results in the Patient Portal and be alerted when new results are available. We’re keen to chat to anyone interested in this product that would be happy to share their thoughts, and potentially help us test our initial product. Please reach out via your Transformation representative. 

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.

December, 2025
We're excited to share the latest releases from DrDoctor. Packed with enhancements, optimisations and new features, this update represents our ongoing commitment to give you the best experience with us.

Multiselect specialities in the booking request page

We’ve improved navigation on the booking request page, making it easier to use, especially for teams managing multiple specialities.
You can now select multiple specialities at once to create a tailored worklist that better supports your team’s workflows.

Staff Portal users can set flexible patient invite-to-slot ratios

We’ve added more flexibility to the patient invite-to-slot ratio in Automated Scheduling, giving teams greater control over how many patients are invited per available slot.

Trusts can now choose to under-invite (to offer patients more choice) or over-invite (to optimise slot utilisation), depending on local needs.
The invite-to-slot ratio can now be set to any positive value between 0.1 and 10 per available slot.
For example, a ratio of 0.1 means there must be 10 available slots for 1 patient to be invited.

November, 2025
We're excited to share the latest releases from DrDoctor. Packed with enhancements, optimisations and new features, this update represents our ongoing commitment to give you the best experience with us.

Update to video link SMS to provide more information for recipients.
We've made a simple but effective change to Video appointment link SMS's by adding the patient's first name. In care settings where these messages are managed by care staff, such as care homes or prisons, it can sometimes be challenging to determine which patient the link is intended for. 
This change makes it much easier and efficient for care staff to manage.

Basic Rescheduling Migration
We completed important backend migration work to improve system performance, reliability, and long-term scalability. This change does not affect any user-facing functionality, but strengthens the foundations for future enhancements.

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.

October, 2025
We're excited to share the latest releases from DrDoctor. Packed with enhancements, optimisations and new features, this update represents our ongoing commitment to give you the best experience with us.

Search filter for Appointment confirmations product

You can easily search via Patient name or MRN when looking for a specific patient on the Appointment confirmations page.
This change is small but impactful, making it much easier and quicker for staff to find the patients they need without endless scrolling.

Patient Access Policy and Rescheduling Limit Guidance

All Trusts have a patient access policy, which outlines how they manage access to their services. It ensures that patients are treated fairly, that appointments are booked appropriately, and that national waiting-time standards are met.
We've included wording in the patient portal to raise awareness in patients that frequent changes to their appointments may lead to a delay in care.
We also made a change in the staff portal to make it much clearer to users how the rescheduling limit works.

Grouped capacity (’Multiple locations’) is now live for Automated Rescheduling at NHS Humber Health Partnerships.

Automated Rescheduling

Background

Currently, when a patient attempts to Auto Reschedule their appointment, they are only presented with slots in the DrDoctor clinic they were originally booked into. There may be other clinics they are eligible to book into (for example, the other clinics with the same clinician, that occur at a different location on a different day).

HHP has a clinic grouping concept called ‘Access Plans’, and patients should be able to reschedule into any appointment within their access plan. This helps ensure slot utilisation is optimised as much as possible.

What did we do

HHP has an endpoint that can identify which DrDoctor clinics are within the same Access Plan and can therefore be safely presented to patients who would like to reschedule.

What if my Trust wants to do the same?

For your Trust to have the same functionality, they would need to build an endpoint. Please find the spec here: Clinic Groupings for Automated Rescheduling | DrDoctor. Until then, please note: Patients will only be able to reschedule into slots in the DrDoctor clinic they were originally booked into.

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.

Help us improve DrDoctor at your trust!
We’d love your feedback on your experience using DrDoctor. This short, anonymous survey has 10 quick questions and takes about a minute to complete. 

Share your feedback

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.

August, 2025
We're excited to share the latest releases from DrDoctor. Packed with enhancements, optimisations and new features, this update represents our ongoing commitment to give you the best experience with us.

DrDoctor Forms Updates 

Shareable Preview for DrDoctor Forms 

We have introduced a new shareable preview feature for DrDoctor Forms, making it easier for clinicians and admin staff to review submissions even if they don't have a DrDoctor account. Previously, only the person building the form could view it in real time. Now, once a form is saved, you can generate a public link that can be reopened by anyone, including colleagues outside the platform, to see the form exactly as a patient would.

This update streamlines collaboration during form design, especially for multi-disciplinary teams. Clinicians can quickly check clinical content, verify calculations, and experience the form's flow without logging in.

Patient Demographics in Form Submissions PDFs 

Form submission PDFs now include patient demographics and specialty (if available) at the top of the file. This enhancement makes it easier for clinicians and admin teams to identify and contextualise submissions without having to cross reference other systems, improving review efficiency and record-keeping accuracy. It's especially useful when a form submission is printed, ensuring all relevant identifying details remain visible and linked to the patient record.

NHS App Lookup  

You can now view NHS App Contact History for individual patients in the Staff Portal. 

Users can search via the patient's NHS number and return notifications sent via the NHS App to that specific patient over the last 6 months. You'll be able to see:

1️⃣ The time the notification was sent

2️⃣ Message contents

3️⃣ Message status (Delivered, Notified and Opened) that, when hovered over, show the time of that particular status, eg. the time that the notification was opened. Status definitions are explained here. 

Basic Rescheduling Info from Patients is now Mandatory

The information provided by patients when submitting their basic rescheduling request is now mandatory in line with the functionality within the NHS App. This means that booking teams will have more consistent information to support actioning the patient's request.

Reporting updates 

We are making improvements to our letters report

We have simplified the definitions used to report on letter paperless preferences. The visual now shows: 

1️⃣ All uploaded letters

2️⃣ Letters split by explicit preference for paper or paperless

Any patients with no explicit prefernces (preferences that haven't been set to fall back to the trust default) will be excluded from this view, as before. 

This refers to the bottom of the three charts on the Letters Report. All other charts remain unchanged. 

Fix for Smart SMS Data in the Insight Hub Appointment Notifications Report 

We are implementing a partial fix to back-fill the missing Smart SMS notifications in the Appointment Notifications report on the 22/08/2025. Due to data limitations we cannot recreate this fully, but we have succeeded in bringing volumes within 1% of billing statements. 

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.

June, 2025
We're excited to share the latest releases from DrDoctor. Packed with enhancements, optimisations and new features, this update represents our ongoing commitment to give you the best experience with us.

Links (and more) now available in Direct Messaging

Who is this for? Any clients using the Direct Messaging functionality.

We've been busy making some exciting changes to our Direct Messaging functionality. As of Thursday 5th June, you'll be able to: 



🟢 add links to messages and templates,

🟢 use styling such as bold, italic, bullet points, numbered lists and more.

These new features are available when:


🟢 creating a new message,


🟢 creating and/or editing a message template,


🟢 responding to a message.



Whilst these features are available to you, they are not available patient-side; patients can respond as normal in plain text.

Appointment Confirmations is now live in the Insight Hub

Who is this for? Anyone using the Appointment Confirmations page.

What does it offer? The report offers rich insights into different types of appointment engagements, how they are being used and how they’re influencing patient attendance. Even better, anyone onboarding to the new page will get instant access to this data.

With this report, you’ll be able to:

1️⃣ Track how many appointment engagements are being sent,

2️⃣ See how patients are responding,

3️⃣ Measure the impact by comparing DNA rates with message volumes and engagement levels.

The report updates daily and offers flexible filters, including: clinic, DNA risk, patient demographics, and more so you can tailor insights to your needs.

Partial submissions in Forms

Who is this for? Any clients using DrDoctor forms, both through the Patient Portal and the NHS App.

Patients can now start filling out a form in the NHS app or DrDoctor Patient Portal and automatically resume where they left off even if they switch devices or browsers. 

🔵 Progress is saved in real time, including uploaded images, allowing users to complete forms at their own pace without losing data.

🔵 This seamless experience reduces frustration and helps ensure more forms are submitted on time.

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.