Scheduling Appointments

The WebScheduler feature of WebPractice helps a physician manage patient appointments online. As a result, appointments of any patient can be immediately pulled up for perusal or rescheduling. Physicians can also block off time during which appointments are not available. Since everything is online, if the physician has given permission (by setting a parameter during the provisioning of the office data), patients can also schedule their own appointments online. This results in fewer interrruptions at the physician's office thereby increasing the staff productivity. If the patients are not permitted to schedule online, then they may request an appointment. However, a patient is always permitted to cancel his appointment.

Schedule Alert

The physician may not allow his patients to schedule their appointments on-line. In such a case, the patient can only request an appointment. These requested appointments show up under "New Patient Alert" on the WebPractice Home Page. The physician can then select these requested appointments and either approve them or deny them.

To view the requested appointments, click on "Appointment Request Alert" hyperlink. The page showing the appointment requests from all the patients is displayed.

Screen 1 - Appointment Request Alert Page



The above screen displays a list of patients who have requested appointments. The list gives the following information :-

• Select check box,
• Appointment Date and Time,
• Physician Name whose appointment is taken,
• Office Name,
• Patient Name,
• New Patient / Existing Patient Indicator,
• Telephone number of the patient,
• Best Time to Call, and
• Reason for Scheduling the appointment.

From the above screen, one can either approve the appointment or cancel the appointment. To approve the appointment, select check box with a tick mark and click the [Set Appointment] button. These then show up in the scheduler. To deny the appointment, select the check box with a tick mark, and click the [Delete] button. The [Cancel] button will take one back to the WebPractice Home Page.

Scheduler

Within a practice that contains multiple physicians and multiple offices, appointments are scheduled for a particular physician at a particular office. Depending upon the login type (i.e. Practice Level vs. Office Level), one either sees all the physicians belonging to a practice or only those associated with a particular office.

To open the "Scheduler", click on physician name with his office under the "Scheduler" option. The "Scheduler Page" for that physician is displayed. The "Scheduler Page" shows three tabs - Schedule, View and Block.

Schedule

To schedule an appointment, on "Scheduler Page", select "Schedule" tab. Click the radio button adjacent to the week in which the appointment is to be scheduled. Then click the [Go] button. While scheduling, the physician cannot schedule any appointments for previous dates.

The following screen is displayed.

Screen 2 - Scheduler along with the Calendar



On Screen 2, click the day of the week and the time slot to schedule the appointment. The Screen 3 will be displayed.

Screen 3 - Patient Appointment Scheduling



Enter the details for scheduling an appointment for a new patient or an existing one along with the reason for scheduling and then click on [Go] button to set an appointment. The [Cancel] button will take back to the Scheduler Page without scheduling an appointment.

To cancel an appointment, click on the concerned appointment (i.e. patient last name) shown in Screen 2 above. The screen showing the confirmed appointment will be displayed. See the screen below.

Screen 4 - Confirmed Appointment



In the above screen, click the check box adjacent to the appointment and then click on [Cancel Appointments] button. The [Back] button will take one back to the Scheduler Page.

View

This option enables the physician to view and optionally cancel all the previous appointments for a particular patient. Note that all the appointments of the concerned patient are shown here irrespective of the physician with whom it is scheduled and irrespective of the office at which it is scheduled. On "Scheduler Page", select "View" tab. 

Screen 5 - View Tab



Enter the any of the following search criteria to view the appointments for a particular patient :-

• Account Number
• Last Name and First Name
• Phone Number

Now click the [Go] button to get a list of patients for the search criteria given. See the following screen.

Screen 6 - Patients Search Result



In the above screen, click on the link of [Last Name] to view the details of the confirmed appointment. See the following screen. 

Screen 7 - Confirmed Appointment Screen



If the physician wants to cancel the appointment, click on the [Cancel Appointments] button.

Block

Using this option, the physician can either block or unblock a particular period of a day or multiple days. To block a period of a day, the physician has to give valid reason. Blocking can only be done if there are no appointments scheduled during that period.

On "Scheduler Page", select "Block" tab. The following screen will be displayed.

Screen 8 - Block Tab



In the above screen, specify the following details to block / unblock the period :-

• Reason for blocking the period. If a period is being unblocked, it plays no role.
• Start Date,
• Start Time,
• End Date,
• End Time,
• Block / Unblock.

Click on [Go] button to block / unblock the period specified.