Using The Calendar And Organiser

The main calendar in Practice Master Pro can be colour coded to your own specifications and displays booked appointments or availability for your practitioners and can also display appointments by room. You can show different calendars side by side or combined in to a single colour coded view.

The calendar has two distinct views:

• Appointments View
• Availabilities View

Appointments view displays booked appointments and shows information relating to that (subject, description, room etc). Availabilities view shows available slots based on 'Appointment Types' for the practitioner. 'Appointment Types' combine start options along with duration etc which means your reception staff do not need to know all the different types and lengths of all your practitioners appointments.

 

Showing Appointments On The Calendar

Step 1
Click on the main 'Organiser & Calendar' tab to view appointments. Notice the 'More Options' side panel.

Step 2
If you expand the side panel 'More Options' panel you can select other practitioners or rooms to add to your calendar. The other calendars will appear side by side in the main calendar area.

Step 3
You can show practitioner calendars as well as room calendars in the same view.

 

All In One View

The calendar images above show 'side by side' calendars for each user/room next to each other. You can combine separate calendars in to a single one and each set of appointments will be given its own colour. New colours will be assigned to new users or rooms as they are added to the calendar.

 

Showing Availabilities Instead Of Appointments

Booking by availability can help reduce booking errors if you have a receptionist booking for you and/or work at more than one physical location during the week. As practitioners will usually have more than one appointment type with different start options, locations and durations it can be difficult for receptionists to remember all the different specifics of your practitioners appointments when booking patients in. Availability view along with 'Appointment Types' makes this process easy and less error prone and very fast.

Step 1
Open the 'More Options' panel and select 'Availabilities' at the top.

Step 2
When you have a user selected in the 'Staff Members' area of the 'More Options' panel you will notice the 'Appointment Types' collection becomes visible and open. If you select more than one user then you will see all the appointment types for the selected users. You must select at least one appointment type for the availabilities to appear on the calendar.

The image above shows two users selected and one of each of their appointment types. The calendar is in 'All In One' mode so the availabilities are shown on a single calendar and colour coded by user so you can tell the apart.

 

Finding Availabilities Quickly

The 'More Options' pane gives you all you need to find availabilities quickly even if you have a busy reception and lots of practitioners with different appointment types, durations and locations.

The 'More Options' panel is a bit like a 'Search' panel where you set criteria and display results on the calendar.

In Appointment view you can search by:

• User
• Discipline
• Location (if Rooms & Locations are enabled at your practice)

And for Availability view you can search by:

• User
• Appointment Type
• Discipline

In both cases above the 'Discipline' buttons will select all users for you who belong to the discipline. And for each case you can display your results either 'side by side' or 'all in one' colour coded on the calendar.

The different search options open to your receptionist include:

• Finding the first 'initial consultation' or any other appointment type for a specific practitioner
• Finding the first 'initial consultation' for an entire discipline regardless of practitioner
• Offering several appointment times for a specific practitioner or a selection of practitioners
• Finding an empty period in a room or across several rooms
• Finding the first availability at a specific practice location

 

Creating Appointments

You can create several appointment types on the calendar including:

• Appointments
• Recurring Appointments
• Patient Visits
• Reminders

Step 1
To create a new appointment drag on the calendar to select the start and end dates (the duration) of the appointment, then right click the selection and choose 'Create Appointment' from the shortcut menu.

Step 2
You can fill in the details of the appointment in the 'Appointment Details' window. Some important fields are:

• The owner of the appointment (it will appear on their calendar)
• A Room/Location if you have this feature enabled (set in the 'Practice Details' administration window)
• Recurring settings - None/Daily/Weekly/Yearly

Notice you can override the system assigned colour in the appointment window above.

 

Creating Patient Visits

Step 1
Select the start and end points on the calendar then right click the selection and select 'Create Patient Visit' in the shortcut menu.

Step 2
Select the patient you want to create the visit for, remembering you can search using the textboxes and the surname start characters in the 'Patient Browser'. You can use the 'Create New' button to create a new patient from this screen.

Step 3
You can enter the appointment details (or change them as you wish) in the 'Visit Appointment Details' window.

Notice you can override the system assigned colour in the appointment window above.

 

Editing Appointments

To edit appointments you can:

• Double click the appointment and edit the fields in the 'Appointment Details' window
• Right click the appointment and select 'Update Appointment' then edit the fields in the 'Appointment Details' window
• Drag the appointment to a new location on the calendar
• Click the top or bottom edge of the appointment and re-size it to change its duration

The image below shows an appointment that is in the process of being re-sized to change its duration.

 

Online Booking Features - Creating A New Patient

Appointments booked online will flow back in to your application automatically. If the appointment is for a new patient who is not currently in your system, or if the details provided by the patient online were not sufficient for the patient to be found automatically, the appointment will appear greyed out.

Step 1
If the appointment is for a new patient or one that could not be automatically matched in the system, you can right click the appointment to find or create the patient.

Step 2
If you cannot find the patient yourself and are satisfied they are new you can go ahead and click the 'Create New Patient...' button to enter them and link them to the appointment in a single step.

 

Calendar Colours & Highlights

You can specify your own custom calendar colours in the administration section and give them meaningful names for your staff to use such as 'Private Patients' or 'Child Patients' etc. The calendar will assign a colour for you for your appointments and you can also override the colour if required.

The calendar is able to alert you to important information about the patient or visit 'at a glance'. A couple of examples of this are:

• Money Owing On Account
• Notes Not Created

The appointment shows a 'highlight' down its left side to alert you of these things. If more than one applies then the highlight colours will be striped so each can clearly be seen.

You can also set a default calendar colour for a patient so that any time a visit is booked for them their appointment will appear a specific colour in the calendar. If you open up the 'Patient Details' screen for a patient you will notice the ''

 

Right-Click Shortcuts

There are many right-click shortcuts built in to the organiser to help you navigate quickly through the application and to perform common tasks quickly. Some of the features include:

• Open/Edit the appointment
• Set a reminder

If the appointment corresponds to a patient visit:

• Open the accounts for the patient
• Open the accounts for the visit
• Generate documents against the patient
• Create an invoice against the patient
• Create an invoice against the visit
• Open the patient notes for the appointment
• Open the patient's details
• Send a new email or an email template to the patient
• Email the patient a link to the online patient intake form

The image below shows an appointment that is being right clicked to open the patient's account history.