Booking Boarding the OpenVPMS Visual Scheduler

Submitted by Guest on Thu, 19/03/2009 - 10:01

General User's Discussion

Morning All... :)

Just wanted to raise the issue of booking boarding appointments in OpenVPMS.

The listed scheduler in V1.2 was great with this and would allow you to define a start and end date and put an appointment entry on all dates as defined. It also allowed you to edit and delete this booking as one single entry, making the management of boarding bookings very easy.

Unfortunately boarding bookings are not as easily managed in the new visual scheduler in V1.3. This is not specifically an OpenVPMS issue - but an issue I have seen in all system which use a visual style scheduling system.

Presently the system seems to:

*If the first cell free on second and subsequent days is the same time cell as booked on the first day and there are no other bookings in between the end time of the booked cell on the first day and the end time of the cell on the final day, it will book off this one cell on all pages.

*If the first cell free on the second and subsequent days has a start time prior to the cell on the first day and there are no other bookings in between the end time of the cell on the first day and the end time of the cell on the final day, it will book of this cell on the first day and on subsequent days will block off all cells from the start of the day to the end time defined in the appointment criteria. This is when looking at the VIEW rather than individual SCHEDULE. On the individual schedule it shows only the relevant cell blocked off.

*If there are any bookings in between the end time of the cell on the first day and the end time of the cell on the final day, it will not be able to make the appointment and will return a message that "Cannot schedule appointment. Appointment overlaps with existing appointment.

*Once you have made one appointment that spans several days you are not able to book any other appointments between the end time of the cell on the first day. It will return a message that "Cannot schedule appointment. Appointment overlaps with existing appointment." I am guessing that although you can still see available cells in the SCHEDULE VIEW and SCHEDULE, that the database sees these cells as used by the long appointment.

In summary, to create and manage these bookings in OpenVPMS you need to make individual bookings on each day during the timeframe the patient is boarding. Editing and deleting would also need to be done for each individual day. Far more manual and laborious than the way this worked in the listed scheduler.

This can not be resolved with changes to configuration or workflow and needs further development. Boarding bookings are quite different in nature to the other bookings we make in the clinic. Boarding bookings are more like booking out hotel rooms than booking specific appointments.

I am wondering how many clinics out there would like to see development to allow simple boarding booking in the visual scheduler, and what factors you think need to be considered?

Cheers :)

Gerrie

Gerrie Cooney BSc

Business Development Consultant

Essentia Consulting

M 0408 811 883

F (08) 6311 7431

E gerrie@essentia-consulting.com

Re: Booking Boarding the OpenVPMS Visual Scheduler

Submitted by Matt C on Thu, 19/03/2009 - 11:01.

Hey Gerrie,

The behaviour of the scheduler since 1.3 is more meaningful with respect to these types of multiday appointments. We used to use that type of appointment in 1.2 but it was a loophole and created problems if you ever wanted to do time and motion reports for your schedulers. The behaviour in 1.3 for theschedulers is better in that regard.

One potential way to manage the requirements of a boarding availabaility is using the existing setup is to enter Completed times at the time of making the boarding appointment within a Worklist.

So for example;

1. Fluffy wants to stay between 19/3 til 25/3.

2. Got to Boarding worklist (can exist on the same view as hospital which makes sense as often we are talking about shared resources (ie.ward space).

3. Create a task of type "Boarding"

4. Enter the start date and end date. Status is irrelevant - but would be pending to begin with (In Progress after admitted etc etc).

Doing it this way will allow a receptionist to check if availability is present by just looking at the any date for that worklist and seeing how many tasks are present for that day.

We do this currently for multiday stays for Vet students... they have the same requirements as a boarding patient.

Re: Booking Boarding the OpenVPMS Visual Scheduler

Submitted by Tony De Keizer (not verified) on Thu, 19/03/2009 - 12:01.

Hi Matt,

Apart from not being in the same workspace as the other schedules, which is minor, I think that is a very good solution to the issue. Well done !

Cheers

Tony