SCHEDULING ADMINISTRATION To access the Scheduling admin you can go from the appointment book and go to the icon with the hard hat. You can also go to the top title bar and choose Admin, Scheduling Admin. The first tab is Classes. This can be used to group a set of resources together for search ahead purposes. The idea is to put similar providers in a class and then you can search for the first available by classes instead of individual resources. The Resource tab is the next tab. A resource can be a person, place or thing. This is what you apply a template to and what is shown for each provider, room, machine, etc. A resource can be set up as a Daily template or a Weekly template. The next tab is Events. Events are used to determine how much time to block for each resource. Events can be different time intervals for each resource. Events can also be a specific color now so when a certain event is selected you can tell at a glance what the event is on the schedule by the color. Categories are what hold the events. It is what makes up the colors on the schedule. Some practices set up very specific categories allowed only on certain times. Others use one category and have an open concept schedule. This is where the event color might come into play. Weekly Templates is the next tab. Most practices use weekly templates, especially if the provider or resource has a set schedule that doesn t vary on a weekly basis. Daily templates are used when a resource does not have a set schedule every week or varies several times in a week. 1
Begin by adding a Resource To begin creating a schedule you need to start with adding the Resource. Go to the Norton or right click and choose New. First name the resource with either the provider s name or what the place or thing is. You will then choose the type: Person, Place or Thing. You need to decide if it is going to be a weekly template or a daily template. You will also choose a Physician Link if you prefer. This will make whatever provider you have linked at the Physician Link as the rendering on each appointment that is scheduled. If it is a provider then you would want to link that provider to the resource. If it is a place or thing and the rendering provider changes with each appointment then you would want to leave it blank. That will force the person scheduling the appointment to choose the provider as rendering for that appointment. This is all you do here right now but you will come back and apply the template after it has been created. 2
Next you will add the Events. 1. Name the event 2. Give the event a Short description. This is a 3 character description. This Short description is what you will see on the appointment book when the patient is scheduled. 3. Details. This is optional. It is used if there are specific instructions or preparations that you want to give the patient when a certain event is scheduled. It will be available for the scheduler to tell the patient when they are making the appointment. 3
4. Next you will determine the duration for the event. Each provider can choose a different duration for each event but you will want to choose the duration that the majority of the providers use for that event as the default. The practice preferences are set up for the appointment scheduling. It is good to use 5 minute increments if you have 10 and 15 min appointments as that is the only way you can accomplish both appointment times on your schedule. 5. Require linked patient appointment- This is a good thing to check on each event as it will not allow a user to schedule a patient without linking a patient to the appointment. The only type of event that you wouldn t want to check this on are those events that you wouldn t need a patient attached to such as Unavailable. 6. Background Color: This is a feature that will show a specific event on the appointment book by having a different color for the event. Normally the category is where the colors come from on the appointment book but if you use an open concept schedule (all one color- generic office visits) then you can make a certain event stand out on the appointment book by the color. For instance a physical might have one color and a new patient might have a different color. That would alert the staff that additional paperwork needs completed. The only way the user will see the event color is by setting their scheduling user preferences that says to show event colors. 7. Overrides: This is where you can override duration for an event if the provider wants a different time for the event than what you have at default. For instance if the majority of the providers want 15 minutes for an office visit but a certain doctor only wants 10 then you add them to the override and change the duration to 10. When this provider is selected for an office visit it will automatically default the appointment to 10 minutes. 8. Default Resources: If you have an event that is always going to be done by a particular resource then you can set the default resource to this provider and it will always schedule the event with a specific resource. An example of this might be a treadmill. An event of treadmill is only done by one particular resource so you will mark the event with that default resource. This feature isn t used by many practices but can be beneficial in some instances. 9. Limits: This is used for when a provider wants to limit the number of times a certain event is scheduled for a particular day of the week. For example a provider only wants to do 2 Physicals a day. You mark the Limit Default to 2. If a provider will do 3 physicals on Wednesday then on Wednesday you would change it to 3. If there is a certain date that he will do 6 then you can add the exact date and change the override to 6. This does not specify a time of day that it can be scheduled- only the number of events that can be scheduled for that day. We don t usually use the SIMs, Locations, External or Note Template. 4
Next are event chains. We do not use this function very often. Users have found it is easier to go make 2 appointments instead of trying to use the event chain search. An event chain is where you want 2 events scheduled back to back. For instance a physical and a mammogram. You would make an event chain for these two events, and then do your search. The system will look for available appointments where these 2 events can be scheduled back to back. When you use the event chain to schedule the appointment it will schedule both appointments at the same time. It is a great concept but not very time saving since it takes so long to search for these appointments. Next you will add Categories Categories represent the colors on the schedule and what can be scheduled when and where. Some practices have very specific categories so that they can have certain events done at certain times. For example if a provider only wants to do physicals the first thing in the morning and the first thing after lunch then the practice would have to use a category of Physicals and set them up as the first appointment of the day and the first appointment in the afternoon. This would be a visual reminder to the scheduler that they can only schedule the physical in these 2 time slots. They might have a physical category with the different physical events listed in this category, then an office visit category with the different events associated with an office visit attached to this category. For example, office visit, med check, recheck, new patient, etc would be listed as an office visit and would be the only available events 5
in the drop down when scheduling an appointment. Others might want to see their acute appointments right before lunch and at the end of the day. They would have a category of Acute with events such as Illness or Injury. Other practices just want an open concept schedule- where the provider will see anything at anytime. Just a generic category of Office Visit could be created and all events attached to this category. This is where you could have a specific color attached to an event so even though the office visit category is for example yellow, you could have a new patient event with an event color of green. When the check in person looks at their schedule it will show the green appointment so they can tell at a glance that this is a new patient and can give the new patient info to the patient. Next you will create a Weekly Template Most offices use a weekly template for their providers. If a provider is going to a set place every week or always has a certain day off a week then they will have a weekly template. They can have more than one weekly template as well. This would come in to play if the provider works one day a week at a certain location and then the next week at a different location, or has a day off one week and no day off the next week. As long as the weekly schedule stays the same for the majority of the time then a weekly template is the way to go. 6
To begin you go to the Norton and select New. You will name your template (I suggest Last name, First Name) then choose a color for the template. This is used only for applying the template and a darker color is usually better. You will then select your category that you want to start with and then select your service location for where the provider is going to be seeing patients that say. You need to highlight the area that you would like the category and service location applied to. To do this either use your mouse or hold down the Shift Key and then use the arrows on the keyboard to go down and over. The small box to the right of the day listed is the service location. The service location is always to the right of the day. 7
Right click and choose Apply Both Category / Location You can continue with these same steps until you are finished with your schedule. You can change the category as you go to select a different category for another time slot. When you are finished say OK. When you say ok you will get a pop up screen asking you to update the search engine. ALWAYS SAY NO. The search engine will update at midnight. You are now ready to apply the template to the resource. 8
Go to the Resource Tab and double click or right click and open the resource, then click Template Next you will look at the list of available templates on the right side of the screen and highlight the one you want to apply. This is where the color for the resource comes in to play. After highlighting the desired template then you simply click on the week, the month or the entire year until you have everything that you want to apply and then select Apply. 9
After clicking Apply the question about the appointment search engine comes up again. Remember ALWAYS SAY NO. Your template will then change color to the color of your template so you can visually see which template is attached to the resource for that time period. Again you could just select the year on the top right and it would apply the template to the entire year. 10
If you have a provider that has a different schedule every other week (maybe off a day one week but works it the next week) you can handle this easily as well. Right click on the weekly template that you have for them currently, and then select Copy. From here it will ask you to enter a new template name. After renaming it open it up, change the Associated Color to another color, and then make the change to the weekly template. Say OK and then NO. Next go back into the Resource and open it up and go to the Template button. Highlight the new template name then click on the weeks that it should be applied. Say apply and then NO. You can now see exactly which template is applied for which week at a glance. 11
DAILY TEMPLATE You can create a daily template when you have a provider that doesn t have a set weekly schedule and randomly goes to an office on different days. You first start by creating a new Resource and mark it as a Daily Template 12
Next, go to Daily Templates and go to the Norton and select New. Create the new Daily template just like you did the weekly template- but just for the single day. 13
You then go back to the Resource and select the Daily Resource, then template. Highlight the correct daily template on the right and then apply each day. You can make daily templates to be used for Exceptions, such as Vacation or Holiday, or Doctor Out. Just make the category as Unavailable and mark it from 8-5 or whatever your hours normally are. This can be used for all resources since it is very generic. 14
To Apply Exceptions to the Weekly Template When a provider is going to be out of the office or making any change to his normal weekly template you need to make an exception to his template. To do this you go into the Resource tab, selected the resource and then select the Template button on the lower left hand side of the screen. This will open up his normal weekly schedule that you have applied. Next you will highlight the day that you want to make the exception to. Right click on the day and select Exception. This will open up the Template Exception screen listing the week that you are making the exception. Select the daily template that you want to apply and then select the day that you want to apply it to. If it is just one day then just select that particular day. If it is the entire week then highlight each day, right click and say Apply Daily Template. 15
After you have applied the exception it will change the entire week to Red. This is an alert to you that something is different that week. You don t know and can t tell what is different until you open the week up and see what has been changed. You can also make a change to the template on an individual day basis without using the daily template. Simply highlight the day you want to make the exception for, chose Exception then just make the change to the actual template. This works nice when you just need to make a change for a portion of the day- for example when the provider is going to be out in the afternoon but work in the morning. Just change the category for the afternoon to unavailable. This will only affect the week for the day you have highlighted. 16
A few hints. If you reapply the template for any reason, any exceptions that you have made will be wiped out and you will need to enter them again. Also, if you make a change to the template without copying it and creating a new one with a different effective date it will change the entire template beginning the day you applied it. I always suggest right clicking on the template, select copy, then rename and change the color of the resource and then go apply the new one with the changes effective the date you choose. Also, if you make changes to the template and apply them to all weeks except those with exceptions on them the entire template will change except for the week with the exception- so you won t lose the holiday that you have applied the daily template to but the rest of the week will not be updated with the changes you made as well. 17