The OPD token system.
Without the 5 a.m. line.

What an OPD token system actually does

A token is a promise: you will be seen, and in this order. Everything else about a token system — paper slips, a display board, an app — is a way of making that promise visible. The clinics that run calm OPDs are not the ones with the most hardware. They are the ones whose promise is kept every day.

The 5 a.m. line forms when the promise is unclear. If a patient cannot know from home whether a seat will be left at 10, the rational thing is to arrive at dawn. A token system that only starts when the shutter opens does nothing about this; it just organises the line that already exists. The fix is to let patients hold a seat before they travel.

Designing the queue

Start with sittings

A sitting is one stretch of consulting time: Monday 9:00–12:00, Monday 5:00–8:00. Give each sitting a number of seats the doctor can genuinely see. A token is then a position inside a sitting, not a position in a day-long line.

Split the seats between online and the counter

Decide how many seats in each sitting may be booked online and how many are kept for patients who walk in. Online bookings must never be able to take the counter’s seats; otherwise the front desk has nothing to give the patient standing in front of it. A clinic with mostly local, older patients might keep 60% for the counter. A clinic whose patients travel from other districts might open 70% online.

Tokens follow arrival, seats follow booking

An online patient holds a seat; a token is issued when they arrive. A walk-in gets a seat and a token at the counter. The doctor’s list is the arrival order of checked-in patients, which keeps the room fair without anyone arguing about who booked first.

Have a rule for the late doctor

Doctors run late. The queue should move with them, not quietly collapse. When the sitting slips by half an hour, push the whole queue by 30 minutes and tell every waiting patient at once. The message is the system working, not the system failing.

How the token queue works on Treatlly

• ✓Seats before the day starts. Each doctor’s week is described once — days, sittings, seats, how many may be booked online — and the bookable slots are generated from it. Patients book and pay a seat from home.
• ✓Check-in with a token. At the counter, today’s patients are checked in and given a token number. The doctor’s list follows arrival order. This is Treatlly’s Clinic Flow, switched on for your clinic on request.
• ✓Counter seats stay reserved. Walk-ins are booked at the counter into the seats held for them, from the same calendar the online bookings use.
• ✓The 30-minute push. From the staff app, a doctor or receptionist pushes the queue by 30 minutes and every patient is told by SMS.
• ✓No hardware. The front desk and the doctor see the same list on a phone or a browser. A display screen is optional.

Read more on OPD management software and how to split seats between walk-ins and online bookings.

Can online patients and walk-ins share one queue?+

Yes, and they should. Both hold a seat in the same sitting; the token issued at check-in records the arrival order. The only difference is where the seat was booked and whether it was paid in advance.

Do I need a token display board?+

No. Treatlly works without one: reception and the doctor see the same live list on the staff app or in a browser. If your waiting room already has a screen, it can simply show the list.

What happens when the doctor does not come at all?+

Mark the sitting as a holiday. Treatlly moves the booked patients to another day and tells each of them by SMS, instead of leaving a waiting room to find out for itself.

How many seats should a sitting have?+

Count what the doctor actually sees on a normal day, not what the doctor would like to see. Set that, watch two weeks of real arrivals and no-shows, then adjust. Overbooking to cover no-shows is the fastest way back to the long line.