Set your consultation defaults
How to set your i-consult consultation defaults: your History Preference tile (Quick, Standard, or Full) and the default days before appointment for the questionnaire link.
i-consult applies a set of defaults to every episode it creates for you, so you don't have to make the same choices each time. Set them once in your profile and they carry across to every new episode, whether automatic or manual. You can still override any of them on an individual episode when you need to.
These defaults live in your profile preferences. They seed each new episode; changing them here doesn't alter episodes that already exist.
Set your defaults
Go to Settings → Profile and find the i-consult Preferences section.
Choose a History Preference tile: Quick History, Standard History, or Full History. This sets both your questionnaire depth and your consultation time (see the meanings below).
Set the Default Days Before Appointment (0-30). This is how many days before each appointment the patient receives their questionnaire link.
Click Save Changes. The button shows "Saving..." while it saves.
What the History Preference options mean
- Quick History: critical questions only, based on the referral reason. For consults under 15 minutes. Sets your consultation time to 5 minutes.
- Standard History: a focused summary based on the referral reason. For standard-length consults. Sets your consultation time to 15 minutes.
- Full History: a comprehensive history tailored to your specialty. For long consults. Sets your consultation time to 60 minutes.
Choosing a tile sets your new-patient and follow-up consultation times to the same value.
Custom configuration. If your new-patient and follow-up consultation times were set to different values before this change, the page shows them as a custom configuration until you choose one of the three tiles above.
About Default Days Before Appointment
The default, and our recommendation, is 3 days. Three days balances getting fresh information before a consult against rushing the patient: late enough that their answers reflect how they are now, but early enough that they have time to complete the questionnaire without feeling hurried.
You can set anything from 0 to 30 days, and you can override it per episode when a particular appointment needs different timing.
What you'll see
Your i-consult Preferences sit alongside the rest of your profile fields: Full Name, Professional Title, Specialty, Practice Name, and Location. Once you save, every new episode created for you (automatically from your EMR or manually) starts from these values.
Your history preference and consultation time shape how deep the questionnaire goes, but the history your patient produces is still their own self-reported account. Whatever defaults you choose, you remain responsible for reviewing and confirming the history during the consultation.
If it doesn't work
- You want to change the timing for one patient only → don't change your default. Set Days Before Appointment on that individual episode instead. See Create a patient episode manually.
- The SMS still went out at the wrong time → see The SMS date/time looks wrong.
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