Appointment Linking: What It Is, Setup, and How to Use It

Plenty of patients come in for more than one thing in a single trip: an adjustment, massage, decompression, laser, etc. Until now, the front desk either booked each of those as a separate appointment and hoped they lined up, or squeezed several services into one appointment.

Appointment Linking lets you book those appointments as one linked set. ChiroHD knows they belong together, suggests times that work for the whole set, moves and cancels them together, arrives them together, and marks them on the calendar so anyone can see they go together.

A linked set is always one patient, on one day, with at least two appointments. Before your front desk books its first linked set, someone who manages your settings — usually the owner or office manager — spends about ten minutes on setup.

Once appointments are linked:

Linked Appointment Templates are predefined sets of multiple appointments scheduled on the same day, saved so staff can book the full day’s visits in one step. The bulk scheduler can book weeks of multi-appointment visits in one pass. ChiroHD warns before anyone moves or cancels one piece of a set on its own. And you decide which appointments in a set need their own SOAP note and charge, so Health Check stops flagging the ones that don’t.

The appointment drop-down menu gains linking options: Create Linked Appointments, Link Same Day Appointments, Manage Linked Appointments (2), Find a Time, Unlink This Appointment, Unlink All (2), Cancel All (2), and Delete All (2). The number in parentheses changes to match the set. If your location locks linked appointments to their order, an appointment that’s waiting its turn also offers Take Out of Order.

Editing, rescheduling, cancelling, or dragging one linked appointment now asks what you want to do first. Unlinking a live appointment is blocked once the set has started. Cancelling or deleting one appointment on its own still works.

In the patient’s Future Appointments tab, a linked set shows as one row. Patients can’t reschedule or cancel a linked appointment from the patient app — they are asked to call the office instead. An appointment that’s already Treated or Completed can’t be moved to another day, linked or not. You can still change its time on the same day.

What stays the same: every appointment keeps its own SOAP note and charges. With Appointment Linking, you can now specify whether each appointment in a set is expected to require a SOAP note or a charge on the ledger — see the Notes and Charges section below for how to configure this. Linking doesn’t introduce a new reminder policy — if your appointment reminders are configured so that all appointments in the set share the same preset, ChiroHD’s existing text-reminder flow can send one message for a patient’s same-day appointments using the first appointment’s details. Appointment subtypes stay and work the same way.

Not available in this phase: membership model locations, family bookings, multi-day sets, shared SOAP notes, overbooking through Find a Time, and rescheduling a whole care plan in one step.

The first time anyone at your location opens Linked Appointments (within the location settings), the section shows only a welcome card. Click Get Started to open the setup wizard, work through the Find a Time and Flow preferences (Steps 2 and 3 below), and click Save and Finish. Nothing is saved until you click that button.

These settings decide what Find a Time suggests. They never stop staff from placing an appointment by hand.

The three options for Alternative Scheduling Preferences:

⚠️ Wait time and overlap only apply when staff tick them under If Nothing Fits in Find a Time. Without those ticks, Find a Time looks for back-to-back times only.

When one linked appointment is done, does the whole set move with it, or does each one move independently? Configure this to fit your practice’s workflow. Arriving one appointment automatically arrives all other Scheduled and Confirmed appointments in the set, regardless of which option you pick.

A template is a saved combination your office books often. Staff pick it and get the whole set in one step.

Templates exist at two levels. System-level templates are created by a system admin and apply to every location. Location-level templates are created by your location and apply only there.

At the location level, you can customize a system-level template — adjusting the description, whether order matters, and whether it’s active at your location — but you can’t change the name or the appointments themselves. To stop using a system-level template at your location, hover over its ACTIVE button and click SET TO INACTIVE.

Location-level templates are fully editable, including deleting them. Deleting any template never affects appointments already booked from it. Tick Show inactive to see templates that have been set to inactive.

Each location also manages its own preferences — Find a Time settings and Linked Appointment Flow — independently of templates. Those are set in the Preferences card and apply to your location only.

Changing a template does not update appointments already booked from it.

In a linked set, not every appointment requires the same documentation. Each appointment has two switches:

Both are on by default. Turning one off tells ChiroHD not to expect it for that appointment — it doesn’t stop anyone from writing a note. This keeps Health Check clean by removing those appointments from its missing notes and missing charges lists.

For example: in a Total Health Visit template with an Adjustment and Hydrotherapy, you’d leave both switches on for the Adjustment and turn both off for Hydrotherapy if it’s covered by the adjustment’s note and billed as part of it. If your office bills hydrotherapy separately, leave Charges Required on and switch off only Notes Required.

With nothing set, Find a Time treats every calendar equally. Staff can always place any appointment on any calendar by hand.

When a patient needs two or more appointments on the same day, book them together in the Create Linked Appointments window. Open it by clicking the link icon in the calendar header. If you already have a patient’s snapshot open, the patient will be pulled in automatically. Otherwise, use the search box under Patient Lookup to find them.

Once the patient is selected, choose how to build the set:

Once your set is built, click Find a Time.

💡 Before clicking Find a Time, ChiroHD pre-selects the time slot you clicked on the calendar when opening the window. It uses that as your preferred starting point — check it before running the search.

In the Find a Time panel:

Under Suggested Schedules, each row is a complete schedule for the whole set. The best option is marked Recommended. Scroll down to see all available options.

⚠️ When starting from a template, ChiroHD places the set at the best open time it finds, which may not be what the patient wants. Check the start time before booking.

💡 If a template’s order is fixed, click Allow a different order in Find a Time to see more options for this booking only. The template itself doesn’t change.

Two additional rules worth knowing: an appointment that’s part of a family booking can’t be linked, and different cases are fine — an adjustment on an insurance case and a massage on a cash case can be one set.

If appointments were booked separately but belong together, you don’t have to rebook them. The two tools below link them as-is — neither one moves, reschedules, or changes an appointment in any way.

Use this when you spot one patient’s appointments on the same day that should be linked.

💡 If no other appointments appear, the patient’s other appointments that day are either already linked or fall outside your Maximum Wait Time setting.

Use this when you want to sweep your entire upcoming schedule and link same-day appointments across all patients at once. This is especially useful right after turning linking on for the first time.

⚠️ Links on past appointments can’t be undone. Once any appointment in a set has started or been completed, the set can’t be unlinked. Check your selections carefully before confirming.

💡 You can run Find Appointments to Link as often as you like. Each run only shows what isn’t already linked.

The bulk scheduler works the same way it always has — the only difference is how you start it and what gets booked at each visit.

When reviewing visits, red rows couldn’t be placed — click Find a Time on that row to find an available slot, or click the x to skip it. Schedule Appointments stays unavailable until every row is resolved or removed.

💡 A single plan checks up to 200 visits at once across all phases. For longer care plans, schedule in separate batches. To change a plan after it’s booked, delete the future visits from the patient’s Future Appointments tab and run the bulk scheduler again.

Every appointment in a linked set shows a link icon beside the patient’s name on the calendar. Hovering over the icon highlights the rest of the set and shows how many appointments are in it. Clicking it opens Manage Linked Appointments for the whole set.

In Provider View, hovering over a linked appointment shows a Linked Visit summary listing all visible appointments in the set. If part of a set appears to be missing, check which calendars you have switched on — the popup shows a count of any appointments on calendars that are currently hidden.

On the Flow tab, linked appointments carry the same link icon. Each appointment still has its own card since each may need its own room and provider.

Arriving a linked set: marking one appointment as Arrived automatically arrives all other Scheduled and Confirmed appointments in the set, whether you arrive it from the calendar, the Flow tab, patient check-in, or the patient’s reply to a check-in text message. What happens after arrival depends on your Linked Appointment Flow setting.

This section only applies if your Linked Appointment Flow setting is Lock them to the order they happen in. Once the set has been arrived, each appointment waits for the one ahead of it to reach Treated. The first appointment is free to go, and the ones after it wait their turn.

Where you’ll see it. A waiting appointment is marked in three places. The label names the appointment it’s waiting on, for example ⏳ Waiting on Adjustment. The first appointment in the set shows nothing.

What a waiting appointment can and can’t do. It can’t be put in a room or marked Treated until its turn comes, from any screen. If someone tries, ChiroHD says which appointment it’s waiting on and what to do. Everything else still works: staff can open it, write and save its note, check it out, cancel it, or mark it Missed. Saving the note keeps the note. The appointment just stays where it is until it’s free.

What frees it. A waiting appointment is free to go as soon as the one ahead of it reaches Treated or Completed. If the one ahead is cancelled, marked Missed, or moved, it no longer counts, and the next one is free. The Flow tab updates right away. The queue and the calendar can take a moment to catch up.

Take out of order. Use this when the patient needs to go in a different order today, for example when the doctor is running behind and the massage therapist is ready first. Click Take out of order on the waiting appointment: on the Flow tab, in the queue, at the top of the chart, or from its drop-down arrow on the calendar. There’s no confirmation step.

🔒 Once any appointment in the set has started, a single edit, reschedule, or move can’t take it out of the set. Once any appointment has been arrived, treated, completed, or marked missed, the set can’t be unlinked. Cancelling or deleting one appointment on its own still works in both cases.

📅 An appointment that’s already Treated or Completed can’t be moved to another day, whether you use Reschedule Appointment or drag it. Its note and charges are dated for the day of the visit. You can still move it to a new time on the same day.

🔧 Running into an issue? If you’re already set up and something isn’t working as expected, see Appointment Linking: Troubleshooting, Tips, and FAQ.

If a patient needs two or more appointments on the same day, link them. If your office books the same combination regularly, make it a template. If your providers need a linked visit seen in order, choose Lock them to the order they happen in, and use Take out of order on the days the order flips. If you’ve just turned linking on, run Find Appointments to Link once to catch up — after that, use Link Same Day Appointments whenever you spot a pair booked separately. Switch a notes or charges requirement off only when another appointment in the same set always carries that note or charge. If you’re not sure, leave it on.

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