This is the main appointments screen and from here you can navigate to review, make change or cancel appointments. To make an appointment for a practitioner, point to the time slot and with the left mouse button, ‘drag’ over the number of time slots you want. When you let go, another window will pop up that lets you define the reason for the visit and schedule it.

The screen shows two full months, and you can point to any day. The button to the lower left of the calendars shows today’s’ date – just click on that to return to ‘today’. The button to the right shows the date which is being shown in the appointments window.

Features of the screen:

• The number of providers (resources) defined fill the screen, depending on your settings. You define how many will appear on one screen.

• You can schedule for multiple locations from this screen.

• Overbook columns are added automatically to clearly show how many patients a practitioner is booked for in a time period. In the screen shown, Dr. Feldman has three patients scheduled at one time, hence three columns were generated by the system. The system automatically generates columns needed to show all of the appointments for a practitioner.

• The ‘reason for the visit’ shows to display why the patient is coming in. This reason prints on the Practitioner Schedule and other clinical reports.

• The system will show the prior authorization number (next to the visits authorized). This information is pulled from AS/PC®.

• If a patient has multiple authorizations, they are retained by The Physician’s Paperless Office® and can be viewed/selected in the Appointments System if that is installed.

• Patient selection can be by account number or last name.

• Patient appointments (history and future) can be displayed along with their disposition.

• You must enter the new patient into the AS/PC® system first, then make the appointment.

• When a patient arrives, you should check them in. This will log a successful appointment for statistical purposes and will update the ‘next appointment’ date in AS/PC®.

• If a patient is not checked in, they are assumed to be a ‘no show’ following the scheduled date of the appointment. No action is required on the part of the staff and the statistics are updated accordingly.

• If a patient cancels an appointment, you should select a reason. Statistics will be updated by ‘reason’.

• The user can determine the background colors for different practitioners.

• You can define the ‘appointment type’ which will have a color, normal length of visit, normal description, and recall days.

  • The ‘recall days will automatically place a date in the patient clinical records for that appointment type which is the number of days specified.

  • This is to be used for such things as ‘annual physical’, mammogram, or other checks that need to be done periodically. The recall report will show all patients with a recall date within the specified date range.

  • You can print letters or reminder cards to the patient to make the appointment.

  • These can be mixed, and there can be any number by patient (annual physical, quarterly checkup, etc.). You cannot have two entries that are the same for one patient.
     

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