Setting up your practice
Set up your practice
Four stages take your practice from a new toolkit to a team using reviewed, local guidance.
- Practice admins
- Clinical reviewers
You set up the toolkit in four stages: describe how your practice works, prepare your cards, have them clinically reviewed, and get your team ready. Your team can share the work and come back to it over several sessions: any practice admin can do most of it, and only approving cards needs your clinical reviewer. Your saved answers, cards and reviews count towards your progress each time you return.
Open your setup journey
You need a practice admin account.
- Open the menu and choose Practice settings. Select your practice if you are asked to.
- Choose Setup & onboarding.
Until your questionnaire is finished, the menu also shows Begin setup or Finish setup, which opens the same page.
The page shows how many of your cards are approved, for example 23 of 221 cards approved, and a Your next step panel with the next outstanding task. Below that, each stage has its own card.
While cards are being reviewed, the panel shows two jobs side by side, each with its own button: cards waiting for a clinician to check (Check cards, or Check rewrites when they’re all AI drafts), and cards sent back for changes, which any practice admin can make (Make changes). The same two jobs appear in the Continue setting up panel at the top of other pages until setup is finished.
To shrink that panel to one line while you work on something else, choose Hide. The line still shows how many cards are approved, or your next step. The panel opens in full again when your next step changes, or when you choose Show. Your browser remembers the choice, so on another computer the panel starts in full.
The four stages
- Stage 1: Describe your practiceAny practice admin
Done when: Questionnaire finished, and at least one appointment type switched on.
- Stage 2: Customise your cards with AIAny practice admin
Done when: AI drafts saved, or Use existing wording chosen.
- Stage 3: Review and approve your cardsClinical sign-off
Done when: At least one card approved, none pending and none with changes requested.
- Stage 4: Prepare your teamAny practice admin
Done when: A staff account that isn’t a practice admin, and high-risk buttons set up.
If AI customisation isn’t switched on for your practice, stage 2 doesn’t appear and you have three stages. For help with the appointment section of the questionnaire, see Appointment types and naming and Minor illness clinician.
A sensible order
Work through the stages in order where you can:
- Describe your practice first. AI customisation can’t start until the questionnaire is finished and your appointment types are set.
- Prepare your cards before clinical review, so your reviewer isn’t checking wording that is later replaced.
- Review usually takes the most time, because your clinical reviewer reads each card. Two reviewers can split the work.
- Prepare your team can happen alongside review. Adding accounts early lets you test with a couple of staff before everyone starts.
You don’t have to finish in one sitting. Save as you go and come back to the setup page to pick up where you left off.
Optional extras
Under Make it your own, the setup page offers extras you can do now or later. They don’t count towards the four stages:
- Set up your highlights — colour local appointment names and key phrases so staff spot them. See Highlights and buttons. Once your cards carry your own wording, the setup page also asks whether highlights would help your team. You can answer Not now or We don’t need highlights, and you’re never asked more than twice. See Whether highlights would help.
- Build your Practice Handbook, if your practice has the handbook — contacts, procedures and local knowledge. See Practice Handbook.
All setup tasks and optional configuration opens the detailed checklist beneath the journey. As well as the tracked steps, it lists recommended steps: the appointment directory, highlight rules and, where available, the Practice Handbook. These improve your team’s experience but aren’t needed to go live. See Setup checklist and Surgery Health.
When setup is finished
Once every essential step in the checklist is done and someone at your practice has used the toolkit in the last 30 days, your practice counts as live. From then on, the Setup & onboarding card in Practice settings becomes Surgery Health, and opens Surgery Health instead of the setup journey. Editing a card later sends that card back for review, but it doesn’t put your practice back into setup.
Next: After go-live.
Need help? Email contact@signpostingtool.co.uk.