Walk-ins and online bookings.
Seats for both.

The problem every Indian OPD has to solve

Online booking is a good thing until the first morning the counter has nothing left. A patient who walked an hour to the clinic is told the day is full because thirty people booked from home. The clinic either turns them away, or the doctor sees them anyway and the booked patients wait. Either way, the trust that online booking was supposed to build is gone.

The answer is not to choose between walk-ins and online bookings. It is to give each of them seats that the other cannot take.

How to split the seats

Per sitting, not per day

Set the split for each sitting: Monday morning might be 20 online and 15 counter; Monday evening 10 and 10. Mornings often need more counter seats because older and local patients come early; evenings suit working patients who book from the office.

Start from who your patients are

If most patients travel from other districts, open more seats online — they need the certainty before they leave home. If most are local and elderly, keep more at the counter. There is no universal ratio; many clinics begin near half and half and adjust after two weeks of real numbers.

Set a same-day cut-off

Online bookings for today should close at a fixed time — an hour before the sitting, say — so the front desk knows the list is final and can give the remaining seats to walk-ins without a booking arriving mid-sitting.

Let unsold online seats go to the counter, never the reverse

Once the cut-off passes, the online seats nobody booked can be given to walk-ins. The counter’s seats must never be taken by online bookings, no matter how busy the week looks. This single rule is what makes reception trust the system.

Give everyone the same token

At check-in, an online patient and a walk-in get a token in the same sequence. The doctor sees one list in arrival order. Patients see fairness.

What to tell patients

• ✓On the website and at the counter: “Book online for a guaranteed seat. Walk-in seats are available in every sitting on a first-come basis.”
• ✓On the confirmation SMS: the date and the sitting, so the patient arrives at the sitting and not at dawn.
• ✓When a sitting is full online: show the next available sitting, and say that walk-in seats still exist.
• ✓When the doctor is late: tell everyone at once, with the new time.

On Treatlly, every slot rule carries separate online and counter quotas and a same-day cut-off; online bookings cannot use counter seats; reception books walk-ins into the counter seats from the same calendar; and check-in issues tokens in arrival order. See OPD management software and the token queue guide.

Should walk-ins pay the same fee as online patients?+

Usually yes; the difference is when they pay, not how much. Online patients pay by UPI at booking; walk-ins pay at the counter. Some clinics add a small convenience fee online to cover the gateway charge, and say so before the patient pays.

What if online seats sell out and the counter seats sit empty?+

That is the signal to move the split: more online, fewer counter, for that sitting. Review it every couple of weeks rather than every day; patients adjust their habits slowly.

Can a walk-in book a seat for tomorrow at the counter?+

Yes. Reception can book any patient into a future sitting from the same calendar, into either the counter seats or, before the cut-off, the online seats.

Does a follow-up count as a walk-in or an online booking?+

Either, depending on where it is booked. What matters is that it takes a seat in a sitting and counts towards the day’s capacity like any other visit.