Many practices are now working together across PCNs to deliver care more efficiently and we’re here to support that. If your PCN uses EMIS Community, you can use Hippo to book into shared PCN appointment slots.
This guide explains:
What’s needed to make PCN slot booking work in Hippo
What “patient tracing” means
And how to avoid unnecessary admin for your team
Let’s break it down 👇
🛠 Step 1: PCN EMIS needs to be connected to Hippo
By default, Hippo only connects to your home practice’s EMIS system. To book patients into PCN-wide slots, the PCN’s own EMIS Community instance needs to be onboarded, just like we did for your practice EMIS.
Once this is done:
Hippo can display and book into PCN-wide appointment slots.
These slots will appear during campaign setup and booking flows, just like your regular ones.
📍If you don’t see PCN slots in Hippo, the most likely reason is that the PCN EMIS hasn't been connected yet. Let us know and we can help get that process started.
🔄 Step 2: Tracing patients into the PCN EMIS
Once Hippo books a patient into a PCN slot, there’s one more step to ensure everything runs smoothly on the PCN side: patient tracing.
🧾 What is tracing?
Tracing is an EMIS Community process that pulls the patient’s details from their registered GP practice into the PCN system, allowing PCN staff to:
Access their record
Document the appointment properly
Write back any codes or notes to the right place
🚫 Does tracing block bookings?
No — tracing does not stop Hippo from booking into PCN slots.
Patients can be booked without issue, but if the tracing isn’t done before the appointment, the PCN team may not be able to access the record or carry out the appointment effectively.
🕒 When and how does tracing happen?
There’s flexibility in when tracing can happen, but someone must do it at some point. Tracing is usually done by:
Approach | What it means | Pros & Cons |
PCN-led tracing (recommended) | PCN staff trace patients periodically e.g. each morning or weekly batch | ✅ No work for practices ✅ Smoothest booking flow ⚠️ Admin burden for PCN |
Practice-led tracing | Practice staff trace each patient after booking into PCN EMIS | ⚠️ Adds admin burden for practice ⚠️ Risk of missed tracing |
On-the-day tracing | PCN traces the patient when they arrive for the appointment | ✅ Simple but reactive ⚠️ Potential delays if patient isn’t pre-traced |
There’s no “right” time. Tracing just needs to happen before or during the appointment to allow the PCN to access the record.
💡 Note: EMIS doesn’t alert anyone when a new booking is made, so the PCN may need a manual process to check for new appointments.
💬 What should we do next?
If your PCN EMIS hasn’t been set up with Hippo yet, let us know — we’ll work with your PCN team to get started.
If tracing is required by your PCN, we can help you plan a workflow that works best for your team.
Ideally, we recommend having the PCN team handle tracing centrally, to avoid adding extra steps to individual practices.
We’re happy to help make this work smoothly across your network. Just drop us a message if you need support.