How to accept a patient portal invitation
What the clinic sends, how to recognise a genuine message, and how long you have. Plus an honest account of what is missing from this route today.
The clinic treating you can open access to the patient portal — the place where you see your appointments, your treatment plan, your home exercises and your visit summaries. You do not set that access up yourself: the clinic sends an invitation to your e-mail address and you accept it.
How to do it
Find the message and check it is genuine
The message has the subject You've been invited to the patient portal — the name of your clinic. The body carries a short sentence saying the clinic has set up an account for you, and an Accept Invitation button.
If you cannot see the message, look in the spam folder and in the Promotions (Gmail) and Other (Outlook) tabs.
Click within 48 hours
A patient portal invitation is valid for 48 hours from being sent and works once only. After that the link stops working and the clinic has to send a new one.
That is considerably shorter than the week the previous version of this page spoke of — if the message sat in your inbox over a weekend, it has probably already lapsed.
When the link does not work — ask for a new invitation
Phone or write to reception and say exactly what you saw after clicking. Reception will resend the invitation with one click from your patient record. A new invitation invalidates the previous one.
Until access works, everything the portal holds you can get from the clinic another way: the visit summary on paper or as a PDF, appointment times by phone, exercises on a printout.
Once signed in — check three things
Once access is working, it is worth going through straight away:
- Appointments — can you see your next slot.
- Privacy & Consent (in the menu under your avatar) — which consents you have ticked, and how to download a copy of your data.
- Switch clinic — this entry appears only if you are treated at more than one clinic. The data is not shared: they are two separate visit histories and two separate wallets.
When something does not work
We couldn't find that invitation. The link may be incorrect or no longer valid — please ask your clinic for a new one.
What this means: The link is incomplete, has already been used, or 48 hours have passed since it was sent.
Invalid Link
What this means: The address is missing the part after the question mark — most often because the link was copied by hand and got cut off.
Email address must match your account email.
What this means: You are signed in to a different account from the one the invitation was sent to.
This patient record is already linked to another account.
What this means: Your patient record already has an account attached — a guardian's, for instance, or an older account of your own.
Related
- How to reschedule or cancel a visit — the first thing you will do in the portal.
- Patient portal — exactly what you will see after signing in.
- What data we store and where — who is responsible for your medical data.