Single Appointments

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

Before you begin

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

Procedure

To book an appointment:
  1. Ensure you have access to the Outlook-style Appointment Book, set in Practice Explorer Preferences.
  2. From the Bluechip main window, click Practice Explorer.
  3. In the Practice Explorer Margin menu, select the Appointment Book.
  4. 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.
  5. Select the schedule period. You can select from:
    • Day view
    • Work Week view
    • Week view
    • Month view

      You can also use the calendar at the right-hand side to show different time periods.

  6. To add an appointment, locate an available slot, and then either:
    • Double-click the slot.
    • Right-click the slot and select New Appointment.

      New appointment wizard
  7. In the New Appointment wizard, click Ellipsis iconEllipsis 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.
  8. Select the purpose of the booking from the Type drop-down list.
  9. 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.
  10. 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 iconDown arrow and click Add on the secondary window that displays.
  11. Click Next to continue.
  12. 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:
    New appointment wizard
    • Manually enter a date.
    • Select a date from the calendar by clicking Calendar iconCalendar.
    • Find a free slot in the appointment book for the selected practitioner by clicking Appointment book iconAppointment Book.
    • To find a free slot in the appointment book for other practitioners, select Find slot.
    • Enter an appointment time in the Time field or use the clock iconClock to select an appropriate time.
  13. (Optional) Select a priority for the booking. This is necessary only if there is a double-booking.
  14. (Optional) Enter any relevant comments in the Comments field.
  15. (Optional) If there are any appointment warnings, click Next to review the warning.
  16. Click Finish.

Results

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

Example

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/Decrease the length of the appointment, by selecting and dragging the upper/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.