Boarding Schedule View
I'd like to propose a project, if it hasn't already been proposed regarding a new schedule view. This would be a multiple day appointment schedule with:
- Slots on the Y axis
- Days on the X axis
- Appointments that span days
- Re-use of the current date selector as the start date
- Configurable date-range, or end date
- Existing work-flow for these appointments, checking into a boarding task list (no different than the other schedule views)
We've been struggling with to deal with boarding clients, and I think this would help. Does anyone else have issue with boarding type appointments?
I've looked in the code, and it looks doable. The biggest issue is that the Schedule type assumes a single day at present. Expanding that might lead to other types of scheduling possibilities as well.
Cheers, Paul
Re: Boarding Schedule View
Hi Paul,
We have implemented boarding schedules using work lists. Work lists are essentially multi day schedules where the end date can be set using the completed date field. Typicaly this happens when you mark a task as completed but can also be done manually when you create a task. Also you can set the start date to a future date. In this way the task will only appear on the list once that date is reached.
We have also used the Maximum slots mechnism to define multiple worklists to represent different cage sizes and therefore allowing resource management to happen. i.e if only 5 cat cages available and set maximum slots on Cat Boarding worklist to 5 then cant over allocate.
Worth looking into ?
Cheers Tony
Re: Boarding Schedule View
Hi Tony,
We've tried to implement it that way. The trouble is that the staff are confusing the two workflows. Also, in order to determine if there's space available, they have to click through each and every day of the expected stay for a boarder/patient. For us, all the boarders are medical patients as well -- diabetics, or other high-needs boarders. So, we'd like to treat them like any other patient. There are several in between cases as well where we'd have a "drop-off for surgery tomorrow" type case where a cage will be occupied and a multi-day schedule could be appropriate.
So, we end up putting it on the work list and on the schedule. That's the confusing bit. After checkin from the schedule, there are duplicates in the worklist. (BTW, another enhancement I could suggest is that the check-in process look for a pre-existing worklist task for the patient and ask what to do.) I think it's worth it personally to rectify and have a multi-day scheduling option... at least for us.
I'm also happy to do some of the coding (on a super-slow schedule), but the internal framework doesn't appear to have what's needed to limit the changes to just a new ScheduleView. Namely, the Schedule class assumes a single day at this point. I've looked at extending it, but don't have an understanding of the rest of the system to see what the impact would be.
Cheers, Paul
Re: Boarding Schedule View
I would support this change. We tried implementing it via the worklists but it just didn't work for us as it is hard to check availability of resources rather than just checking them visually. We have gone back to using a spreadsheet for booking.
It would make the checkin process much simpler if we were using openvpms.
There is an amazing lack of good dog and cat boarding software out there so this may fill a void and create a separate use case for openvpms.
Matt Y.
Re: Boarding Schedule View
As a reference, I've attached a screenshot of what they do in Avimark. It's pretty much what I described above.
Cheers, Paul
Re: Boarding Schedule View
The main issue is that the appointment service currently doesn't support multi-day appointments (https://openvpms.atlassian.net/browse/ARCH-29 ).
If it did, you could do boarding in the appointments workspace. It wouldn't be as easy to use as Paul is suggesting as it would only be a single day view, but I suspect its easier than trying to do boarding via worklists.
I'm happy to set up a project, for either approach. Note that Paul's preferred solution requires ARCH-29 to be implemented.
-Tim
Re: Boarding Schedule View
Hi Tim,
Is ARCH-29 planned for implementation already? Either way, I'd be curious what the estimate is. If ARCH-29 is planned for implementation, I'd also consider (not that it's a high probability mind you) implementing, or attempting to implement it myself. If the changes get contained to the workspace that sound safer.
Thanks, Paul
Re: Boarding Schedule View
Hmmm.
It is an interesting suggestion.
I wonder if Tasks actually are superior to appointments for this purpose. I say this mainly when I consider the potential usefulness of the max slots property and the lack of need for a time property (just a date property - even though Tasks have times as well).
Consider this example:
Setup
Two worklists, one called "Cat Boarding" and one called "Dog Boarding".
"Cat Boarding" has max slots set to 10 (cos there are 10 cat cages) and "Dog Boarding" has max slots set to 4 (4 runs).
Look
The two worklists are in a new type of Worklist View which shows:
a) Each worklist as a row heading (like "Cages", "Runs" in Pauls example) with a number of rows equal to the max slots below.
Question(s):
1. How many days to show? Ie. How many columns? Say 13 days (7 days with 3 days either side of week?)
This would allow navigation in week jumps but still show overlaps.
Good one.
Matt C
Re: Boarding Schedule View
Hi Matt,
I think ideally, this would show a configurable range of dates. The tricky thing is that the system would need to do an intersect function w/ the start date -- because there could be boarding times that have started in the past and are continuing into the present view.
It could work as a worklist as well -- but our intention would be to use the workflow to check-in a boarding appointment in the same way we would a normal appointment -- not sure how that would flow from a task list. We use the task list as the list of record for what patients are present in the clinic. Currently, it only supports check-out functionality because there was an implied check-in from the schedule.
Cheers, Paul
Re: Boarding Schedule View
Hey Paul,
Ah yes. Check In. I can see why that would be useful. So it would need to be an Appointment schedule.
It should be possible to represent an appointment that extends before or after the currently shown date range graphically. Certainly it is possible to return a true/false value for either case via a subquery.
Cheers,
Matt C