Medicare Doctor Medical and Healthcare

An appointment form collects a request and does not book a time

A patient visits the clinic website, picks her doctor, enters a date and hits send. She walks away feeling she has booked. At the clinic, someone has to open that message, look at the diary, check for a gap and call or write to her to offer a time.

That stretch is what to think about before choosing a theme: a form collects a request, and the diary stays where it was. If nobody replies quickly, the patient believes she has an appointment and the clinic does not know she is expecting one.

Medicare comes with a ready-made appointments page, and in the clinic demo the form asks for name, email, doctor, date and a message. Its fields do not include a time or free slots. For a practice with its own front desk that may be exactly what is needed; if you want the patient to see and take a slot, you will need a booking system alongside it.

Twelve demos by specialty and three right-to-left

Medicare is designed both for a single doctor office and for private centers with several specialties. Its demos cover:

• General and hospital medicine: clinic, general hospital and medical laboratory.
• Specialties: cardiology, surgery, cosmetic surgery, dentistry, optometry and pediatrics.
• Mental and physical health: psychiatry, and physiatry or chiropractic.
• Veterinary: a single-page demo.
• Right-to-left: versions of clinic, cardiology and surgery.

Several include team and doctor profile pages, such as the clinic and dentistry demos.

The timetable, the calculator and the other sector pieces

• Doctor timetable with the Timetable and Event Schedule plugin, included. In the demo, each doctor has a column, and each block shows the type of visit and its time range.
• Cost Calculator, also included. The demo uses dental examples: the visitor enters sessions or teeth per treatment and sees a total.
• Dedicated elements: working hours, price list, before and after images, services and Google Maps.
• Bold Builder for building pages by dragging elements, with content copying between pages and sites.
• Contact Form 7 for forms, with support for WPML, WooCommerce, Yoast and W3 Total Cache.

The timetable table informs, and its labels lead to the appointments page. Booking does not happen from the table itself.

Limits worth knowing before choosing it

The timetable is maintained by hand. Events, columns and categories are added from the Timetable panel on the dashboard. If a doctor changes shift, someone has to update it.

It is not optimized for Gutenberg. The included builder is Bold Builder.

The demo images have to be replaced. They are not cleared for use on live sites, so you need your own photos or ones you have permission for.

Preparing the server and importing a demo

It requires PHP 7.4 or higher, a memory limit of 256M or more and a maximum upload size of 64M or more. These are the steps:

1. Start from a fresh WordPress install: the demos are not recommended on sites with content.
2. Upload the theme in Appearance, Themes, and activate it.
3. Install the required plugins. If you choose a demo with a shop, activate WooCommerce first.
4. Go to Tools, BT Import, and pick the demo for your specialty.
5. Activate Timetable and Event Schedule if you will use the timetable, and replace doctors, photos and prices.

Health themes and booking in the catalog

If you want patients to really book, LatePoint offers a step-by-step booking form with self-service cancellation, and Amelia manages several professionals with their own schedules and syncs with Google Calendar per professional.

Among other themes in the sector, Brivona brings six demos with editing in Elementor or WPBakery.

Questions before building your practice website

Can the patient choose a doctor?

In the clinic demo, yes: the form has a dropdown of doctors.

Can they choose a free time?

In that demo you choose a date, not a time. Seeing free slots takes a booking plugin.

Can I sell products?

Yes, it supports WooCommerce, and the clinic demo includes a shop.