A video consultation works like any other appointment in your list. The patient books a video slot, it appears in your day alongside your walk-in patients, and you open it from the same screen. This guide covers when the call opens, what the consultation page looks like, how to start and end the call, and what to do when something goes wrong.
Finding the appointment
Video consultations appear in your normal appointment list with a Video badge. You do not need a separate screen or a separate app.
When the call is available, a Start consultation button appears on that appointment's row. If you do not see the button, one of these is true:
- It is not yet 15 minutes before the appointment time, or more than 40 minutes after it.
- The appointment is not confirmed — for example the payment is incomplete, or it was cancelled.
- The appointment is not a video slot.
When the call is open
The call opens 15 minutes before the scheduled time and closes 40 minutes after it. A 4:00 pm consultation is joinable from 3:45 pm to 4:40 pm.
Opening a few minutes early is worth doing. It gives your browser time to ask for camera and microphone permission before the patient is watching.
The consultation page
Press Start consultation. On a laptop the page is laid out like a consult room, and it fits your screen:
- A patient bar across the top — the patient's first name, age, sex and weight, the appointment time, the Video and visit-type badges, More details → (their full history in a pop-up, without leaving the call) and ← Back to Appointments. It stays in view the whole time.
- The call on the left — sized for a patient holding their phone upright, so their whole picture fits. It never moves while you write.
- The prescription on the right, already open on the Rx tab. Assessment (what the patient reported), History, Uploads and, where your clinic has it, AI Insights are a click away. Only this side scrolls: its tabs stay pinned at the top and Sign & send stays at the bottom of the Rx tab.
On a smaller screen the page stacks instead — patient bar, then the call, then the prescription.
Joining the call
Press Join video consultation under the call area. The video opens in that space on the same page — no separate app, no new tab, nothing to install. Your name is already filled in on the call's join screen, so just press Join Now.
Your camera and microphone are only requested after you press Join, so simply opening the page never switches your camera on. Until you join, and after you end, the space just says The video call opens here.
Your name and registration number are shown to the patient on their screen before and during the call, as the Telemedicine Practice Guidelines require, along with a notice that video consultations are not for emergencies.
If the patient has not joined yet
Stay in the room. If you use the Treatlly staff app, it notifies you when your patient joins, so you do not have to watch the screen.
If the patient joined and dropped out, they can come back in using the same link — a dropped call does not lock them out, as long as the window is still open.
If the patient joined early, waited, and ended the call before you arrived, just press Join video consultation as normal. The call reopens for you, and it counts as you having attended.
Ending the consultation
When you are finished, press End consultation. This matters more than it looks.
Ending properly closes the room, records the correct finish time and attributes the end to you in the appointment's timeline, and the visit is marked Completed as soon as the call ends. If nobody presses End, the room is left open and is closed automatically much later by the system — which records the end as "System" rather than as you.
If you navigate away with a call running, your browser asks you to confirm. That prompt exists for exactly this reason. Use End consultation instead of closing the tab.
Ended it by accident? A Reopen consultation button appears once the call has ended. It works until 40 minutes after the scheduled time; press it, then join again. Only you can reopen a call.
If the patient never attends
Wait inside the window, then press End consultation. Because you were there, the visit is marked Completed when the call ends, and its timeline records "Patient did not join the video call". That is what your clinic admin sees when deciding on any refund, so you do not need to do anything else.
Writing the prescription
Write the prescription on the right while you talk. Prescribing works the same as an in-person visit, with one clinical difference worth knowing: for video consultations, certain drug classes cannot be prescribed and will block signing. This follows the Telemedicine Practice Guidelines, not a Treatlly rule.
See Writing and signing prescriptions for the full signing checklist, including the requirement to have your signature uploaded before you can sign anything.
If something does not work
| What you see | What to do |
|---|---|
| The video call opens 15 minutes before and closes 40 minutes after the scheduled time. | You are outside the window. Check the appointment time. |
| This appointment isn't confirmed. | The booking is unconfirmed or cancelled. The front desk can check the payment status. |
| The video call is temporarily unavailable. Please try again shortly. | A temporary problem reaching the video service. Wait a moment and press Join again. If it persists, tell your clinic admin. |
| This consultation has already ended. | You ended this call. Press Reopen consultation (available until 40 minutes after the scheduled time), then join again. |
| Video consultation is not enabled for this clinic. | Video consultation is switched off for your clinic. Your clinic admin controls this. |
If the patient cannot hear you, it is nearly always browser permissions at one end. Reload, press Join, and choose Allow when prompted.