One common theme in some of the questions we get is about how DocMeIn works in situations of dependent care. A few examples of what we are talking about:

• a busy mom wants to schedule an appointment for her young child;
• an adult child wants to receive notifications and reminders of appointments for an elderly patient;
• a caregiver wants to see the appointment history and upcoming appointments of her dependant;
• multiple family members want to use their shared email address for their DocMeIn account.

To support all of the above use cases, we separate patient and caregiver roles. Caregivers receive appointment-related messages and can schedule, confirm and cancel appointments for their dependents. However, it is the patient — and not the caregiver — who the appointment is scheduled with.

Practice users can enter caregiver information for a patient in the patient details dialog. When you pull up a patient, Caregiver entry is right there on the Contact Information tab. When you type a person’s name there, a list of matches will be displayed, changing as you type. You can also add a new caregiver this way. It works the same way as patient entry. You can also search for caregivers on the Patients tab with the Caregivers checkbox checked and Patients unchecked. 

Caregivers themselves can log in on your DocMeIn page and manage their dependents’ appointments — as well as their own, if they are also a patient in your practice. By indicating that they are scheduling an appointment for somebody else, caregivers can schedule new appointments for their dependents using the same Schedule Now button as patients scheduling directly. In the process, they will be able to select one of their known dependents (if they are a recognized user) or create a new one.

We will automatically determine who needs to be contacted with appointment-related messages. You can be assured that the caregiver is fully informed of her dependents’ appointments. As always, we will use any combination of email, phone and text messages to deliver reminders, based on your specified appointment settings.

P.S. We know that English speakers outside of U.S. and Canada tend to say carer rather than caregiver. All we can say is that our internationalization work is ongoing!