Planned Appointments

[Rickliftig]

Re: Lab slips and planned appointments (in the advanced forum)

jordansparks wrote:Hmm. Since we always used planned appointments, that issue never came up. I guess a simple check could prevent attaching to today's appt.

Rob Hersh wrote: We hardly ever use the "planned appts". I've tried on several occasions, but it doesn't seem to make sense for us. I guess I'm not that good at planning exactly how many visits a tx plan will take, nor exactly what I will do on each visit.

Not a bad time to start a new thread about this since planned appointments are at the heart of the program. In our office, planned appointments work ok, but.... a few annoyances exist.

1) Once a planned appointment is completed, it has to be removed manually from the planned appointment list.
2) The make/find appointment list is starting to get longer and longer on each patient
3) error checking is handy (the above conversation about lab slips is a good example)

I am interested in the group's thoughts and comments as to how the workflow goes in your office.

[jordansparks]

1. I still don't understand why anyone would want to automatically delete a planned appointment because then you could never verify that the front desk scheduled what you told them to schedule. Maybe it's time to start hiding the planned appointments as they get done instead of the suggestion I hear repeatedly to delete them.

2. So what? I have a few dummy patients for notes that have many hundreds of "appointments". Doesn't seem to slow that window down in the slightest. Or is there something besides old appointments that's cluttering that window? Is it not automatically scrolling to the bottom like it should?

[Rickliftig]

1. I still don't understand why anyone would want to automatically delete a planned appointment because then you could never verify that the front desk scheduled what you told them to schedule. Maybe it's time to start hiding the planned appointments as they get done instead of the suggestion I hear repeatedly to delete them.

2. So what? I have a few dummy patients for notes that have many hundreds of "appointments". Doesn't seem to slow that window down in the slightest. Or is there something besides old appointments that's cluttering that window? Is it not automatically scrolling to the bottom like it should?

1. Hiding makes perfect sense, Jordan
2. You're right they are scrolling down. not a big issue.

My reason for posting this query is that the planned appt. communication is such a vital part of the program (and back office to front desk communication) I was wondering if everyone else was comfortable with the way it was working - or, if there were ideas that could streamline it.

The lab slip issue has been a minor one, but one that cropped up 10 or 15 times in the last six months. It's an easy error to make.

[drtech]

We use planned appts almost all the time....supposed to anyway. Even when the assistant makes the appt in the office, I teach them to first make a planned appt before the current appt is even over and then no matter if they sched it or if the front desk schedules it, it is already down and ready to go, nothing to mess with at the end when the pt is ready to walk out of the room. If you are not doing this in your office, you are missing out on a great help in your office. Just start doing it and you will come to love it.

If you want to automatically hide completed planned appts, I think that would be a good way to handle the situation and still quickly be able to bring it up for reference.

I don't have a full solution to the following problem, but do other offices have the same frustrations? The problem we have with tracking planned appts is still consistency in how people use the program and keeping them and all the other lists of appts up to date. The planned appt lists are full of things we wanted to do but pts never scheduled, have many that we already completed the work and the staff didn't properly link the appts (although that was helped by indicating "some procs complete" now). The unscheduled list is full of old ones that never got scheduled or deleted, the recall lists is separate place to go again. It is still too hard to quickly bring up every pt who is a candidate to fill the schedule for today tomorrow or any time. The lists are getting better than they used to be, but most are still way to cumbersome to use. I would like to be able to say "bring up all the pts who need crowns and schedule someone for me."...or "fill the hyg with an SRP pt for tomorrow and they can bring up the lists, set the filters to what they want and have a fully interactive list to work with.


I think we need a Central Tracking list or something to keep track of pts and bring people in...built on a combination of the planned tracker lists and the recall list. The interactive functions of these lists are great...you just need to be able to quickly broaden or narrow your search within ONE list/(or maybe tabs for different lists in one window?) for simplicity and to get rid of multiple places to keep track of pts. Any thoughts on how this could be improved in tracking planned treatment/and moving up already scheduled or rescheduling unscheduled tx from one place?

[Rickliftig]

Great points, David - I like the idea of a 'central' tracking list a lot.

[Hersheydmd]

So tell me, if you don't use planned appointments, how does anyone know what to schedule the patient for?

Either
1) We schedule the next appt in the operatory, or
2) The front desk will just ask what is being done at the next appt (if in speaking distance, in person, otherwise over the intercom), or
3) If unsure they will just schedule a standard length appointment with no procedure attached.

If the patient is calling to schedule recare/check-up, then there is no planned appt.
If the patient is here for hygiene and needs to return for operative, then the F.D. will schedule a standard operative appointment and attach all or none of the procedures that are marked tx plan - it doesn't make any difference. I'll do as much as I can at the next visit and if necessary reschedule anything I can't get to. Any procedures that were attached to the appt but not completed, will be detached and attached to the next appt.
if a patient has to come in for C&B, we will schedule all the visits up front, rather than one at a time, so again there is no need to use the "planned appt" each time.
If the automatic time algorithms were more customizable, then I could maybe see more value in using the planned appt feature. As it is, we usually have to override the calculations and lock the time, because they rarely give us the appointment lengths we expect, especially when mutliple procedures are selected. But that is another topic.

About the only time I use the planned appt feature is when a patient says they are unable to schedule the next appointment today, instead they will have to call at some time in the future to set it up.

[jordansparks]

"It doesn't make any difference"? I want to know exactly which teeth are being worked on before I walk in that room because I need to be able to review the diagnosis within about 5 seconds so I can start anesthetic. Otherwise, we'll be there all day. There's no discussion, no uncertainty, just action. I would go absolutely nutters if the FD was allowed to make those decisions. I guess we just have different styles.

[Hersheydmd]

Different strokes for different folks. I pretty much know that if there are several teeth that need fillings, I will start on the upper right (#1) and work my way around until I get to the lower right (#32). It's a system.

[atd]

1. I still don't understand why anyone would want to automatically delete a planned appointment because then you could never verify that the front desk scheduled what you told them to schedule. Maybe it's time to start hiding the planned appointments as they get done instead of the suggestion I hear repeatedly to delete them.

I think the request is to have them automatically deleted when the linked scheduled appointment is set complete - not when the appointment is scheduled. I would like to see this as well - one less thing for the provider to have to remember to do, or our front desk to clean up if they forget.

In the Make/Find appointment window I wish the planned appointment would show with the date scheduled (if it is scheduled) like it does in the chart. Instead of using the Make/Find appt window, the front desk ends up going to the chart to put the planned appointment on the pinboard so they can see which ones are already scheduled.