A patient finishes their appointment. Reception goes to process the payment and the health fund claim, and the terminal says it cannot connect. Or it spins. Or it works on the first try and fails on the second.
It is a stressful few minutes, mostly because there is a person waiting and no obvious place to start. This is the order we would work through it, and how to tell whose problem it is by the end.
First: what is the terminal actually connected to?
Terminals reach their provider in one of a few ways, and the checks differ.
A cable to your network. The terminal or its base plugs into a network point, the same way a computer does. If your network has a problem, the terminal has it too.
Your Wi-Fi. Some terminals join the practice Wi-Fi. That makes them sensitive to anything that changes the Wi-Fi: a new router, a changed password, an access point that has been moved.
Its own mobile connection. Some units carry a SIM and do not use your network at all. If one of these fails while everything else works, your IT is probably not the cause.
If you are not sure which yours is, look at the back of the unit and the paperwork from when it was installed, and write the answer somewhere reception can find it. It shortens every future call.
Five checks that take a couple of minutes
Work through these in order. Do not restart everything at once — you will fix it without learning why, and it will come back.
1. Is the internet working at all?
On any other computer, open a website you have not visited today. If that fails too, the terminal is not the problem. Go to your router and your provider's outage page, and treat it as an internet fault.
2. Is it one terminal or all of them?
If you have more than one, try another. One failing points at that unit, its cable or its port. Every terminal failing points at the network or at the provider's service.
3. Has anything changed recently?
This is the question that solves most of these. In the last few days or weeks:
- A new router, modem or switch
- A changed Wi-Fi name or password
- A power outage that took the network gear down
- A cleaner, tradesperson or new fit-out near the comms cupboard
- Someone tidying cables
Terminals are often set up once and then forgotten for years. When they stop working, something around them changed.
4. Look at the cable and the lights
If the terminal is wired, check the cable is seated at both ends and that the network point shows a light. A cable that has been knocked loose behind a desk is more common than anyone likes to admit.
5. Power cycle the terminal, once
Switch the terminal off, wait about thirty seconds and switch it back on. Do this once. If it comes back, note the time it failed and that a restart fixed it — a fault that keeps returning is a network issue worth chasing, not a terminal you should keep rebooting.
Whose problem is it?
Once you have run those checks, you can usually place the fault.
- Other computers are offline too — your network or internet connection. That is your IT provider's job, or your internet provider's.
- Everything else is fine, only the terminal fails, and it is on your network — it is worth someone looking at how the terminal is connected. A changed address, a firewall setting or a Wi-Fi change can all block a terminal that has otherwise worked for years.
- The terminal shows a specific error message or code — write it down exactly. The terminal company can tell you what it means, and that is their support line, not ours.
- A hardware fault, a card reader that will not read, a screen that is dead — the terminal provider replaces or repairs the unit.
We would rather you rang the right person first than the wrong one twice. If you are not sure, ring us and we will tell you honestly which side of the line it sits on.
The bit that costs practices money
While the terminal is down, a common workaround is to write down the details and process them later. That is reasonable for a short outage. The risk is the patient who does not come back, the claim that is entered wrongly from a handwritten note, or the end-of-day reconciliation that no longer matches.
If your terminal goes down regularly, do not keep working around it. A terminal that fails every few weeks has a cause, and it is nearly always something in the network that can be fixed once.
What we would actually do
For a practice that has this problem more than once:
- Find out how the terminal connects and record it, along with its network address and who supports it.
- Give it a stable place on the network so a router restart or a new device does not move it.
- Check the Wi-Fi or cable it depends on rather than assuming it is fine.
- Put the terminal on the list for any planned network change, so nobody swaps the router on a Friday without knowing it is there.
- Keep the terminal company's support number next to the terminal, along with the practice's own terminal details.
None of this is complicated. It is the kind of small, dull job that only gets done after the second time it hurts.
When you would like a hand
If terminals, imaging or practice software are the things that stop the surgery, the free IT health check looks at exactly how they are connected and where the weak points are, written up in plain English with no obligation attached. There is no push from us either way.
If it is happening right now, call 03 7057 1878 — evenings until 9pm, Saturdays 8am–4pm, and a Sunday emergency line from 9am to 5pm. See the after-hours cover if you would like to know more about how that works.