Single Appointments

Create a single appointment from the Appointment Book for new or existing patients.

Before you begin

Ensure you have access to the Outlook-style Appointment Book, set in Practice Explorer Preferences.

About this task

You can also create an appointment from the patient's record.

Procedure

From the Bluechip main window, click Practice Explorer.
In the Practice Explorer Margin menu, select the Appointment Book.
In the Appointment Book, from the Practitioners list, select the practitioner whose appointment schedule you want to display.

You can also use this menu to display the appointment schedules for a group of practitioners. note: After selecting a group to display, you can show or hide individual members of that group using the secondary Display list. For example, the first image below shows that a group called Surgeons has been selected, and from that group, only Doctor Kong's schedule is currently displayed. The second image shows the same group, but with Doctor Kong and Doctor Ayers displayed.
Select the schedule period, for example, Work Week. You can also use the calendar at the right side to show different time periods.
To add an appointment, locate an available slot, and then either:
- Double-click the slot.
- Right-click the slot and select New Appointment.
In the New Appointment wizard, click to select a patient to record the appointment for. If the patient is a new patient, start by entering their family name and press the tab key to open the window where you can create a new patient record. This calls the window that allows you to create a new patient record.
Select the purpose of the booking from the Type list.
Enter an appointment duration time if necessary. The duration defaults to the default time recorded for the selected Practitioner, via the Appointments tab of Practitioner Setup.
The Referring Doctor field automatically displays the patient's most current Referral (if available) and Referring Doctor. If necessary, you can create a new referral via this window by clicking the Down arrow and click Add on the secondary window that displays.
Click Next to continue.
In the Create Single Appointment window, the date and time of the appointment that you selected from the New Appointment window will be displayed automatically. However, you can modify these settings. Either:
- Manually enter a date.
- Select a date from the calendar by clicking Calendar.
- Find a free slot in the appointment book for the selected practitioner by clicking Appointment Book.
- Find a free slot in the appointment book for other practitioners by selecting Find slot.
- Enter an appointment time in the Time field or click Clock to select an appropriate time.
(Optional) Select a priority for the booking. This is necessary only if there is a double-booking.
(Optional) Enter any relevant comments in the Comments field.
(Optional) If there are any appointment warnings, click Next to review the warning.
Click Finish.

Results

You are returned to the Appointment Book window, where the appointment details are now available.

Example

Appointments: Current Patient w/ Current Referral Appointments for an Existing Patient with a Current Referral Running Time: 01:02
Appointments: Current Patient w/ Expired Referral Appointments for an Existing Patient with an Expired Referral Running Time: 01:10
Appointments: For New Patients Appointments for New Patients Running Time: 01:24
Appointments: Managing Referrals via Appointment Book Managing Referrals from the Appointment Book Running Time: 01:12
Appointment: Modify Via Calendar & Time Controls
Appointments: Modify Via the Wizard Appointments: Modifying Via the Wizard Running Time: 02:55
Appointments: Printing a List Printing an Appointment List Running Time: 00:50
Appointments: Modify via Appt Book Appointments: Modifying from the Appointment Book Running Time: 00:52
Appointments: Recurring or Multiple Recurring or Multiple Appointments Running Time: 02:09
Adjustment: Cancelling Appointments Cancelling Appointments Running Time: 02:42
Appointments: Deleting Appointments Deleting Appointments Running Time: 01:37
Appointments: Double Booking Double Booking Running Time: 03:50
Appointments: Finding a Booking Finding a Booking Running Time: 00:37

What to do next

A patient's bookings can be viewed via the Bookings menu item in the Patient Explorer. You can apply a few quick edits to an appointment from this screen, including:

Moving the appointment by selecting it and dragging it to another time slot and/or practitioner.
Increase or decrease the length of the appointment by selecting and dragging the upper or lower edge of the appointment.
Indicate the status of an appointment, by right-clicking it, and selecting Status from the menu that appears. For more information, see Editing Appointments.