Good day Paula ( @paularyfa ),
I have reviewed the notes from Yomika's discussion with you. What she told you was correct but I think you may have partially gotten the wrong impression about something. It is not the case that you should never add appointments to the schedule on the same day; if this were the case, you would have no way to record visits for a patient who is making an emergency appointment, walks in unannounced, or just wants to reschedule to a different time. It is true, however, that changes to existing, already-made appointments which were on the schedule at the time patient flow was loaded must be made through patient flow itself using the method she showed you.
For example, let's take a patient who is on the schedule at 4:30 in the afternoon. You load patient flow for the day, which reads all appointments from the schedule and loads them into patient flow. You then get a call from this patient and they say they want to come in at 3:00 instead.
From the patient flow window, you right click the 4:30 appointment for that patient and select "Change Location". Then select the "Cancelled" radio button and click OK. The following screen will appear:
In this case you would select the second option, to remove the appointment from the schedule. Doing this will delete the appointment from the schedule day itself, will set the appointment as "Cancelled by office" in the patient's Schedule History, and will cause the appointment to NOT be marked as a No Show. If you select the first option, the appointment will be left on the schedule calendar, will be marked as a No Show at the end of the day, and will only show "Cancelled" on patient flow itself.
If you cancel the appointment from outside patient flow via the Schedule screen, the appointment will be removed from the calendar but will be marked as a No-Show when the end of day report is run because it had already been loaded into patient flow at that point.
Next, you would schedule a new appointment for the patient. If the patient is already in the office and you want to add this specifically as a walk-in, you would click the "Add Patient" button at the bottom of the Patient Flow window, then select the patient from the patient look-up. The following screen appears:
Choose the appointment type and chair and click OK and the patient will be added as a walk-in appointment. Appointments added in this way will not be recorded on the actual schedule calendar itself and will show a "Walk-In" entry in Charting when the visit information is saved.
If the patient is not yet in the office, you can add the new appointment as an actual scheduled appointment. Schedule the appointment as usual through the Schedule screen and it will be added to Patient Flow when you exit the Schedule screen. Adding a new appointment to patient flow presents no difficulties and requires no special steps. Assuming that you check the patient in normally and check them out normally through patient flow, they will be recorded as a completed appointment with no Walk-In entry for that appointment and no No-Show entry either.
Regards,
Phil Carter / OrthoTrac Escalations
Good day Paula ( @paularyfa ),
I have reviewed the notes from Yomika's discussion with you. What she told you was correct but I think you may have partially gotten the wrong impression about something. It is not the case that you should never add appointments to the schedule on the same day; if this were the case, you would have no way to record visits for a patient who is making an emergency appointment, walks in unannounced, or just wants to reschedule to a different time. It is true, however, that changes to existing, already-made appointments which were on the schedule at the time patient flow was loaded must be made through patient flow itself using the method she showed you.
For example, let's take a patient who is on the schedule at 4:30 in the afternoon. You load patient flow for the day, which reads all appointments from the schedule and loads them into patient flow. You then get a call from this patient and they say they want to come in at 3:00 instead.
From the patient flow window, you right click the 4:30 appointment for that patient and select "Change Location". Then select the "Cancelled" radio button and click OK. The following screen will appear:
In this case you would select the second option, to remove the appointment from the schedule. Doing this will delete the appointment from the schedule day itself, will set the appointment as "Cancelled by office" in the patient's Schedule History, and will cause the appointment to NOT be marked as a No Show. If you select the first option, the appointment will be left on the schedule calendar, will be marked as a No Show at the end of the day, and will only show "Cancelled" on patient flow itself.
If you cancel the appointment from outside patient flow via the Schedule screen, the appointment will be removed from the calendar but will be marked as a No-Show when the end of day report is run because it had already been loaded into patient flow at that point.
Next, you would schedule a new appointment for the patient. If the patient is already in the office and you want to add this specifically as a walk-in, you would click the "Add Patient" button at the bottom of the Patient Flow window, then select the patient from the patient look-up. The following screen appears:
Choose the appointment type and chair and click OK and the patient will be added as a walk-in appointment. Appointments added in this way will not be recorded on the actual schedule calendar itself and will show a "Walk-In" entry in Charting when the visit information is saved.
If the patient is not yet in the office, you can add the new appointment as an actual scheduled appointment. Schedule the appointment as usual through the Schedule screen and it will be added to Patient Flow when you exit the Schedule screen. Adding a new appointment to patient flow presents no difficulties and requires no special steps. Assuming that you check the patient in normally and check them out normally through patient flow, they will be recorded as a completed appointment with no Walk-In entry for that appointment and no No-Show entry either.
Regards,
Phil Carter / OrthoTrac Escalations
Good day Paula ( @paularyfa ),
If you have your Time Constraints in Patient Flow set to a time which causes a patient to be marked as a no-show after being XX amounts late for their appointment, there is no way to avoid a "No Show" entry entirely. I should point out, though, that the "No Show" entry for a patient who is very late but did actually show up for their appointment and was checked through pat flow is not the same as a patient who never showed up at all / was never checked through at all.
A patient who is marked as a No Show because they were late, but were actually checked through patient flow, will have an entry in Charting marked like this, in the Early/Late column:
A patient who is marked as a No Show because they were never checked through patient flow at all will have an entry in Charting marked like this, in the actual Notes section (and in patient tracking as well):
I hope this helps make the difference clearer.
Regards,
Phil Carter / OrthoTrac Escalations
