Completing appointments

Completing appointments is a good way to make sure that all the necessary tasks have been done for that appointment, such as posting procedures, scheduling the next recare appointment, gathering contact information, and collecting a payment. On the calendar, you can see at a glance which appointments have been completed because those appointment tiles will be a gray color.

Also, to help you complete all the necessary appointment tasks, you can turn on the workflow compliance feature for any location.

To complete an appointment

How to get there

1. On the Schedule menu, click (or tap) Calendar.

   The Calendar page opens.

1. Do one of the following:

   • On the routing panel, click (or tap) the Complete status button.

     

     Note: Changing the status of an appointment for a new patient to "Complete" causes the status of the patient to change from New to Active.

   • On the Calendar page, click (or tap) an appointment. On the Appointment Information panel, change the appointment's Status to Complete, and then click (or tap) Save.

     

   If any of the appointment's procedures have not been posted (either from the routing panel or from the progress notes), the Post Procedures Complete dialogue box appears. Otherwise, skip to step 6.

   

2. Post the recall procedures and any other procedures as needed by clicking (or tapping) the corresponding Post buttons.

3. Complete treatment-planned procedures as needed by clicking (or tapping) the corresponding Complete buttons. You can mark any associated conditions as Treated before you finish completing this appointment, or someone can do it at a later time.

4. Treat conditions associated with completed treatment-planned procedures as needed by clicking (or tapping) the corresponding Condition buttons . If you have not already completed the treatment-planned procedures that were performed to treat those conditions, you can do so before you finish completing this appointment, or someone can do it at a later time.

5. Click (or tap) Complete Appt.

6. According to whether your location uses or does not use the workflow compliance feature for appointment tasks, do one of the following:

   • With workflow compliance: If there are incomplete tasks on the routing panel, a warning message appears, and the incomplete appointment tasks on the routing panel have a yellow background.

     

     Note: The appointment status will remain as "Checkout" until you complete all the appointment tasks or until you specify a reason for not completing all the tasks.

     Do the following:

     1. Complete all the appointment tasks, or at least those that can be.

        

        Under Appointment Tasks, do any of the following:

        • Add New Recare - Click (or tap) the button to attach recare types to the patient's record or to modify or remove recare types.

        • Schedule Recare - After all the necessary recare types have been attached to the patient's record, click (or tap) Schedule Recare, and then click (or tap) the Unscheduled link to schedule the next recare appointment.

          Note: Only primary recare types are required.

        • Collect Phone Number - Click (or tap) to enter a contact phone number.

        • Collect Email - Click (or tap) to enter a contact email address.

        • Collect Payment - Click (or tap) Patient Walkout to enter a payment and perform other actions (such as creating claims) in the Patient Walkout dialogue box.

     2. Do one of the following:

        • If all appointment tasks are now complete (the yellow background disappears, and the tasks have green check mark symbols next to them), complete the appointment from the routing panel or the appointment information panel. Ignore the steps that follow.

          

        • If all appointment tasks are still not complete, click (or tap) the provide a reason for skipping incomplete tasks link. Proceed to the next step.

          

          The Reason to Skip Completing All Tasks dialogue box appears.

          

     3. Select a reason why tasks were not completed. If you select Other, enter an explanation in the box provided.

     4. Click (or tap) Save Reason to complete the appointment.

   • Without workflow compliance: The appointment is marked as completed. According to whether you posted or did not post the recall, do one of the following:

     • If you did post the recall, the Schedule Appointment message appears.

       

       Click (or tap) Schedule Appointment to schedule the patient's next recall appointment.

     • If you did not post the recall, the Update Patient Recare message appears.

       

       Click (or tap) Proceed to Recare to attach the correct recall to the patient's record. Next, you will need to schedule the next appointment for the newly-attached recall type (using the Unscheduled link).

   Note: If you complete the appointment without posting the recall procedure and without scheduling the next recall appointment, the due date of the corresponding recall type attached to the patient does not get updated, and that recall type becomes unscheduled for that patient.

   The corresponding patient now appears under Complete on the routing panel.

   

Related Topics

• Routing patients

• Recall workflow

Related Errors/Questions

• None