Barcoded Flu Clinic with SMS Invites

Once you have purchased a barcode scanner, providing a pre-printed patient identifying slip to booked in patients enables you to quickly and easily scan and record who has been vaccinated as part of a clinic. This is particularly useful for off-site clinics, for example, vaccination hubs.

How does it work?

Invite your Patients

Invite patients to a flu clinic by text message, see Sending SMS Messages.
Book invited patients into the flu clinic, see Vision 3 Appointments Set Up User Guide or Booking an Appointment with Vision Appointments.

Creating Barcode Slips

To create barcoded slips:

Download the latest Appointment Wizard excel document, see Appointment Wizard for details.
Enter the date range of for the flu clinic in FROM and TO:
From Select Slot Status, select Booked appointments only.
Select Import V3 appointment data using Appointment date range to run the Appointment Wizard. The information displays in the App_Data tab of the spreadsheet:
Save the document locally for use below.
Open Microsoft Word.
Select Mailings - Start Mail Merge - Step-by-Step Mail Merge Wizard:
The Mail Merge wizard displays on the right side of the screen.
From Select document type, select Labels.
Select Next: Starting document:
FromChange document layout, select Label options.
If you are using labels, select the label vendor and product from the list. If you are printing on paper and cutting into strips select the most appropriate label setup.
Select Next: Select recipients:
From Select recipients, select Use an existing list.
Select Browse to search for the spreadsheet saved above:
Highlight the spreadsheet required and select Open:
From the Select Table screen, select Appt_Data$ and then select OK:
From the Mail Merge Recipients screen, sort and filter the recipients for the day or book type as required.
Training Tip - You can either filter the recipients using the column filters or the refine recipient list options.
When the patient list is correct, select OK.
From the Mail Merge Wizard, select Next: Arrange your labels:
From Mailings - Insert Merge Field, insert the merge fields along with more text as required to lay out the first label.
Important – Do not change text within the merge fields.
Add an asterisk either side of the merge field with no spaces between, for example *«NHS_Number»*.
To prevent a blank space from being read as a "return key", add any keyboard character immediately after the last asterisk, *«NHS_Number»*x.
Highlight the asterisks and merge field but not the additional character, *«NHS_Number»*x, right click the selected text and select Font.
Change the font to a barcode font. Suitable barcode fonts are:
- IDAutomationHC39M - installed onto Microsoft Word for AEROS users
- free3of9 - on a local desktop only, search for and download from the internet, for example https://www.fontsupply.com/fonts/F/Free3of9.html.
Note - The resulting barcode before mail merge looks odd due to characters that are not barcode compatible. Once the document is merged the barcode appears as expected.
From the Mail Merge Wizard, select Update all labels to replicate the first label to the other labels on the page:
Select Next: Preview your labels.
Preview the labels and edit the recipient list as required. For example, you may want to remove patients that do not have a NHS number.
Once you are happy with the labels and the recipient list select Next: Complete the merge.
Select Print, set the number of records to print and follow the print setup for the labels selected.
These slips can be kept at reception ready for the patients to attend the flu clinic.