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Appointment Schedule
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The user will come to this screen to take new appointments. He can double click on existing appointment slot to reschedule it or to take recurring appointments. In all these cases, this screen is invoked. •  Appointment Schedule popup has a provision to select current encounter's patient name with a single click.

Date: Select the preferable appointment date from calendar for Patient.

Time: Select the preferable appointment time from drop-down menu for Patient. The drop-down for time is populated with Clinic Start Time till Clinic Close Time.

Provider: Select the provider for an appointment from drop-down menu. The default selection is as per Doctor on the main Scheduling page.

Location: Select the location for an appointment from drop-down menu. The default selection is as per Location on the main Scheduling page.

Appt. Type: Appointments can be taken for the Patients OR Others (Non Patients ).

Enc. Types: Select the encounter type from the drop-down menu. It changes to Appointment Types in case of Non Patient and for Patients it is populated

Duration: Enter the duration for an appoinment. Default Duration shown corresponds to the duration for Selected Appointment type. This can be edited based on the requirement.

Name: If Appointment type was patient, as the patient name is typed in, it is Auto completed. A Property setting, Patient Registration Params > patient.search.firstlast, determines if the name will be Auto completed as First + Last name OR Last + First name. alternatively, the user may click on the search icon to select a Patient from a list. For a non patient, the User has to enter the name without any support.

icon: This helps User to fetch current encounter's patient without going through the process of manually searching for the patient. When user clicks on the icon, the name of the current encounter patients is displayed in the Name field.

Case No:
Clinical staff selects the case number from the drop-down list. They fills the relevant details and schedules the appointment. On click on Scheduled button, the selected Case Number will be associated with the Appointment.

Patient Alert icon :
Click on the icon to maintain Alerts about Patients who don't keep appointments or do not pay. This option is typically used by the front office. The front office can enter the comments here. On taking any appointment for this Patient, this button, on mouse over displays existing Alerts.

Patient Note icon : Click on the icon to write adhoc notes and add it to the Patient's Medical Record.

Compose Message icon : It is likely that the Patient has called the front office his health status as requested by the Doctor, or to ask for a Refill. The front office would like to immediately send a message to the Doctor and by exception (as in case of Health Status Reporting) add it to the Patient Medical Records. All this is feasible by entering the details in the pop up which gets invokded on clicking this button.

Existing Appt. icon : Click on the icon to view the Patient's other existing Appointments.

PreAuth link:
Click the button to display the preauthorization information for selected patient insurance.

Reason:
This field accepts the reason for Patient's/Non-Patient's visit to the clinic. The search icon on the right pops up a list of complaints with the respective ICD9 and ICD10 codes. The one or more of these complaints selected gets appended to the reason entered.

Overload: Overload radio buttons helps user to overload appointments if a normal available slot is already booked. There is no restriction on the number of Appointments which can be overloaded in one slot.

Any Time: Many a times a Doctor needs an appointment which is beyond his normal Clinic working hours. If this check box is checked then the system allows the user to take an appointment at any time from 00:00 to 24:00 hrs. This way the user can also take an appointment during the Doctor's blocked time as well as his scheduled holiday/s. This feature is enable only if the property, Appointment Scheduling > appointment.anytime.applicable, is set to Y.

Wait List button:
Click the button on Appointment Scheduling popup, the system invokes the wait List popup. User can create new wait list appointments on this popup.
The Patient can be kept on Wait list for an appointment dates that are currently unavailable but may become available in case of a no show appointment or for any other reason. The user can enter the Preferred date and time in Wait List popup. Patients added in the Wait List are viewed from the Call List section of Appointment Schedule screen.

Note: Conditions applicable for a Wait list Appointment:
  • Wait list appointment date should be greater than current date.
  • Wait list appointment date should be less than the appointment date.
  • Up to Preferred Time should be greater than the From Preferred Time.

Instructions: The user may click the search button to invoke a list of instructions to be given to the patient taking appointment. One or more of these instructions can be selected.
e.g. Come after 12 hours fasting.
This field is displayed or hidden depending upon settings in properties, Appointment Scheduling > appointment.instruction.applicable, is set to Y.

Search link: On click, a new window pops up the Search options.

Multi Doctor: The logic for taking a Multi Doctor appointment has been explained above. The system actually adds as many appointments as the selected Doctors. While displaying a scheduled Multi Doctor appointment, if the appointment was for the Main Appointment Doctor the system also displays the name (or initials) of all the supporting Doctor/s. While displaying a scheduled Multi Doctor appointment, if the appointment was for the Supporting Doctor the system also displays the name (or initials) of the Main Appointment Doctor.
  • Please note that a Multi Doctor appointment cannot be rescheduled.
  • A Multi Doctor appointment cannot be made recurring.A supporting Doctor appointment cannot be deleted.
  • If the Main appointment Doctor is deleted, those for the supporting Doctors are also deleted.
  • All these appointments on the Home Page of the respective Doctors.
  • The Nurse can see the appointment of the Main Doctor only on her Home page.
  • The front office can mark the status of the Main Doctor Appointment only as Arrived.
  • When the status of the Main Appointment is changed, that of the supporting Doctors appointments is also automatically changed.

schedule:
  • If the Patient satisfies with all the criteria selected, then finally on click of Schedule Button, if slots are available, appointment is scheduled.
  • If the encounter type for the selected Patient had Multi Doc checked (under Settings > Configuration > Clinic > Enc. Type) then a pop up with a list of all Doctors other than the Appointment Doctor is shown. The user can select one or more supporting Doctors. The maximum number is set in Appointment Scheduling > appointment.supporting.max_docs.
  • The appointment now gets scheduled only if all the docs are now available.
  • When an appointment for a Patient having Patient type as ‘DISCHARGED' is scheduled then a warning message “ Patient Status is 'Discharged' ” is displayed.
  • If a Patient having multiple appointments on the same day schedules another appointment for the same day then an alert message is displayed. The Alert message displays the Appointment timings , Provider name , Appointment type and Status of all the previously scheduled appointments of the Patient on the same day.
  • An alert about the number of times the Patient has either cancelled appointments or had a No Show appointments is displayed, if a patient reaches a certain count (decided by the Clinic) of either cancelled or No Show appointments. The alert is not displayed for the multidoc appointments.
delete:  On click the current Appointment which is either "Scheduled" or "Tentative" can be deleted.

Close: Click to not book any appointment and close the popup.

Patient Appointment History icon : History can be viewed only for the Patients and not for Non Patients. This gives a consolidated view of all the Past and Future Appointments taken for the Patient in chronologically descending order.

Recurring Appointments: If the user had clicked on an existing appointment a Recurrence button appears. Click on this to repeat this appointment multiple times. Note the subtle difference:
  • New Appointment No Recurrence button displayed.
  • Existing Appointment which has not been repeated Recurrence button displayed.
  • Existing Base (Original) Appointment which has been repeated. A message is shown “Recurs X times”
  • Existing Non Base Appointment which has been repeated. A message is shown “Base Appt on “. A trash can is also shown to delete this specific instance of repeated Appointment.
  • In case of recurring appointments, the delete Button is used to delete all instances of recurring appointment for a base appointment.

Hint: Text messages regarding Patient's upcoming appointments that are scheduled from Patient Portal are sent on Medic's cell phones. Text messages are sent only to those Medics whose availability is defined in Location Master.