Front-desk tasks and subtasks in the Healthcare pack
How the Healthcare pack turns front-desk work into tasks its workflows create stage by stage, with subtasks three levels deep and home-page counts.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Healthcare businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.
Every practice's front desk runs on a list. Confirm tomorrow's bookings. Chase the registration forms that have not come back. Phone the patients who are due for a check-up. Invoice this morning's visits. On paper, or in a shared spreadsheet, that list is only as reliable as the person who wrote it, and it quietly loses items when someone is off sick.
The Healthcare pack in Achekam's Industry CRM takes a different approach: the work is created by the practice's workflows, as each stage is reached, rather than typed into a list. This article explains how that works, how tasks break down into subtasks, and what a day at reception looks like when the pack is running it.
Tasks come from workflows, not typed lists
In the Industry CRM, a workflow creates its tasks stage by stage. When a patient reaches a stage, the tasks for that stage appear; when they move on, the next stage's tasks follow. Nobody has to remember to add them.
The Healthcare pack calls customers Patients and keeps two kinds of record, a Patient file and an Appointment. Three of its workflows generate most of the front desk's work:
- Patient intake. The registration form goes to the patient as a request, medical aid and account details are captured, consent and practice terms are signed electronically by the patient, parent or guardian, and the first visit is booked.
- Appointments. A booking confirmation is sent, attendance is recorded, and the visit is either invoiced or recorded as paid at the till.
- Recall. The patient is invited by e-mail, called if no visit is booked a week later, and given a next recall date.
A workflow step can send the patient a request for documents or a document to sign electronically, and the patient's answer moves the task on. A returned registration form, for example, moves on the step that was waiting for it.
The pack is for the front desk only. It keeps no clinical notes, diagnoses, test results or prescriptions, so none of this work touches the clinical record.
Subtasks up to three levels deep
Some front-desk jobs are really several jobs. Tasks in the Industry CRM can have subtasks up to three levels deep, which lets a practice break a large piece of work into steps a receptionist can tick off.
A worked example in words: a new family registers. The top-level task is to complete the family's intake. Beneath it sits a subtask for each family member. Beneath each of those sit the steps for that person: registration form returned, medical aid details captured, consent signed. Reception can see at a glance that the parents are done and the youngest child's consent is still outstanding, without opening every file.
Use the depth sparingly. Three levels are there for genuinely layered work; most appointment tasks need none.
Agree who picks up which tasks
Workflows decide when work appears. The practice still decides who does it. Before go-live, agree in writing which kinds of task belong to whom:
| Kind of task | Usually picked up by |
|---|---|
| Booking confirmations and attendance | Reception |
| Registration forms and consent | Reception or the practice manager |
| Invoicing visits and till payments | Reception, checked by the bookkeeper |
| Recall calls | A named receptionist each week |
| Anything overdue for more than a day | The practice manager |
Writing it down avoids the commonest failure of any shared list: everyone assumes someone else has it.
Counts on the home page
The Industry CRM's home-page counts come from records, tasks or the ledger, and none is typed in by hand. For a front desk, the useful ones are overdue tasks, tasks due today and key dates in the next seven days.
Because the counts are read from the tasks themselves, they cannot be tidied up for appearance. An overdue count that keeps rising is a real signal: either the desk is short of hands, or a step in a workflow is waiting on something nobody is chasing.
A day at reception, task by task
Opening. The receptionist looks at the home page: overdue tasks first, then tasks due today. Yesterday's unrecorded attendances and unconfirmed bookings are cleared before the first patient arrives.
Morning clinic. As each patient arrives and is seen, the appointment workflow moves on. Attendance is recorded, and the visit is either invoiced or recorded as paid at the till before the patient leaves.
Midday. New registrations are checked. Where a family's registration form has come back, the waiting step has moved on; where it has not, the subtask shows exactly whose form is missing.
Afternoon. Recall tasks: patients invited by e-mail a week ago who have not booked are now due a call. Each call either books a visit or is noted.
Closing. A last look at overdue and due-today counts, and anything left is handed to the next day's receptionist by name.
How attendance and recalls work in detail is covered in recording appointment attendance and recalling patients for their next visit. For a sense of why confirmation and recall tasks deserve the effort, a systematic review in BMC Health Services Research looks at what reduces missed appointments, from reminders by SMS, phone or mail to other nudges, with their measured effects.
A front-desk list that writes itself still needs people to work it. Let the workflows create the tasks, agree who picks up each kind, and read the overdue count every morning before the doors open.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
