any way to QUICKLY audit daily schedule?

[irfan]

My FD has issues with scheduling people properly, and I get the story about people cancelling, trying to fill it, etc. Id love if there was a way to quickly see whether or not a slot was previously filled and cancelled and then re-booked. I can do an Audit, but that doesnt easily show me what used to be in what time slot.

Wish there was someway of looking at a previous snapshot of a schedule at any particular time. Its all in the audit trail so the data is certainly being captured, just not easy to actually use the data.

an example would be that I like them to schedule top to bottom and bottom to top, nothing in the middle unless it fills in. occasionally we'll get a random appt in the middle with wasted time around it, and the excuse is usually that someone cancelled and left the times sporadic with gaps. Id like a way to see if this is true or not. like I could just audit the appointment located at "tuesday 1/5/2012 3:00pm". anyone have an idea?

Open Dental needs a Time Machine overlay!

[jordansparks]

I think that once we allow true "broken appointments", then you will have the information you are looking for. A true broken appointment would be a copy that stayed in place even as the real appointment was being moved to somewhere else. This will require us to make a number of changes to the database and user interface, but it's been planned for a long time.

[Rickliftig]

I'll add that that has been an issue in my office also. I have several part-timers at the FD and need to better train whoever is deficient, but many times can only guess who was at fault.

[irfan]

persistent broken appointments would be fantastic. i hate when i look back at previous months, see huge holes and cant remember if thats because someone no-showed or if it was never booked. same with looking at the current day schedule. I know we had more on this day when i looked last week, but today its looking empty!

[Jorgebon]

In our office we delete the broken appointment and place a patient note in the same time slot. That way you know it was a broken appointment and who had the appointment. You can write in the note if it was a no-show or if the patient had an excuse.
Jorge Bonilla, DMD

[irfan]

not a bad idea. something automated that does this would be great. for now we many have to resort to doing this. for schedule notes we have a MISC patient that we plugin everywhere. is there an easier way to put in noteS?

[Jorgebon]

If you make the note using the record of the patient that did not show up, you automatically have their name and the note is saved in their progress notes. Just click on the appointment, delete it, and then click on the "Make Appointment" button and choose "Note for patient". It would be even better if the software did this automatically.
Jorge Bonilla, DMD

[irfan]

i created new blockouts for cancelled, no show, moved appointments. when someone cancels the FD now has to create a blockout with a description of the cancellation with the proper times so there is a record of it. with this they can atleast drop an appointment over it and the blockout is still technically there. a script that created a blockout with patient name/date/reason and the length of the blockout set for the appointment length would be great.

[jordansparks]

Blockouts, appt notes, adjustments, commlog entries, etc. are all workarounds. We won't automate it until we have actual formal broken appointment objects to work with. Otherwise, we're just digging ourselves into a deeper hole. It's feature request #851.