Appointment

Complete

This window is used to create and edit an Appointment.

The fields are:
Customer - the customer - this is a mandatory field
Patient - the patient - this is an optional field
Appointment Type - the type of the appointment.
Start Time - the date and time that the appointment will start
End Time -the date and time that the appointment will end. If the practice operates on a 24 hour basis, you can create the appointment to run across the midnight boundary - ie start 23:00 on 3/7/13 and end at 00:30 on 4/7/13.  For multi-day (such as Boarding) appointments, you can enter a relative date such as 7d and this will set the end time to 7 days after the start time. (Note that using relative dates normally sets a date relative to the current date - in this case it is relative to the appointment start date.)
Duration - the appointment duration, expressed in days, hours and minutes.
Repeat - determines the appointment recurrence. See Repeating Appointments below.
Reason - the reason for the appointment - the available reasons are set using Administration|Lookups|Visit Reason and Administration|Lookups|Visit Reason (VeNom). Note that this will be placed into the Visit Reason field when the appointment is checked-in. Note that if you key in something (say x) and press enter, you will be shown all reasons containing 'x', eg Desexing, Discuss X-Ray, and X-Ray - ie the search is "contains 'x'" rather than "starts with 'x'".
Notes - any pertinent notes
Clinician - the clinician - this is an optional field
Status - the status can be one of (in logical order) Pending, Checked-In, In Progress, Admitted, Billed, Completed or Cancelled
Author - the user that created the appointment
Send Reminder - displayed if appointment reminder SMS messages can be sent to the customer. Reminders can be sent if:

  • SMS is configured
  • the customer has an SMS contact
  • the appointment Schedule has Send Reminders ticked
  • the appointment Type has Send Reminders ticked

If the first two are true, but not the last two, then an SMS Reminder can still be sent manually. If the first three are true, but not the last, Send Reminders will be displayed, but the check box will be disabled and un-ticked. Changing the Appointment Type to one that supports reminders will enable the checkbox.

Reminder Sent - displayed if a reminder has been sent for this appointment
Reminder Error - displayed if a reminder couldn't be sent, and indicates the cause of the error.

Customer & Patient Alerts - if the customer or patient has any current alerts, these are displayed.
 

Note that normally both the status and the completed date/time are updated by the system's workflow processing when you use the Consult (sets status In Progress) and Check-Out (sets status Completed and the Completed date/time) buttons on the Work List screen, and Complete/Finalise (sets status Billed) button on the Invoice screen.

The two status settings not set automatically by the workflow processing are Cancelled and Admitted. You set Cancelled to show that an appointment has been cancelled. Admitted can be used to indicate that the patient has been admitted to hospital.

Appointment Type

The Appointment Type determines the default duration of an appointment and how it is displayed.
The available types and their duration are set via Administration|Organisation|Schedule.

Repeating Appointments

Appointments can be made to repeat one or more times, to form a series of appointments. Each appointment in the series:

  • has the same details as the first appointment
  • can be edited independently of the series

This can be used to schedule a follow-up appointment, or recurring appointments e.g. Puppy Class.

Repeat Options

Appointments can be made to repeat:

  • Daily
    • Every day
    • On weekdays
    • Every N days
    • Every Sunday...Saturday
  • Weekly
    • Every Week
    • Every N weeks
  • Monthly
    • Every month
    • Every N months
    • On the first..fifth or last Sunday...Saturday every N months
    • On the 1..31 or last day(s) every N months 
  • Yearly
    • Every year
    • Every N years
    • On the 1..31 January...December every N years
    • On the first..fifth or last Sunday...Saturday of January...December every N years

Appointments repeat until a specified date, or number of times. If you use 'until date' you can use the relative date facility - eg 0ye will set the end of the current year, and 6me will set the end of the 6th month ahead.

Restrictions

  • at most only 364 recurring appointments can be scheduled (i.e. for a total of 365 in a series)
  • if an appointment is set to repeat on a day that is not available, it is skipped. E.g specifying a monthly repeat on the 31st of the month will skip all months without 31 days.