Advanced Scheduling Rules
Advanced Scheduling Rules
Introduction
Veribook has numerous features designed to help clinics schedule better.
Clinics are invited to modify basic options on their own. We recommend contacting your account manager to deploy or modify the advanced features discussed below.
There are also other, even more advanced features, not described below. Please contact your account manager if your clinic has unique needs or other requirements not currently being met well.
Patient Status, Roster Status, and MRP
Every type of appointment can be configured in one of three different ways, if a patient health number is requested:
The patient health number does not need to match a patient already in the clinic's OSCAR EMR. (This option is frequently used by walk-in clinics offering walk-in appointments to the public).
The patient health number must match a patient already in the clinic's OSCAR EMR but the patient's MRP does not need to match a particular physician. (This option is frequently used by family practices offering patients cross coverage, where a particular patient can schedule with any physician).
The patient health number must match a patient already in the clinic's OSCAR EMR and the patient's MRP must match one or more particular providers. (This option is frequently used by family practices where specific patients should primarily be scheduling only with their own MRP).
These options can used in conjunction. For example, some clinics may offer walk-in appointments (option 1 above), regular appointments to patients of a particular physician (option 3 above), and urgent appointments to patients of any physician (option 2 above).
Furthermore, for options 2 and 3 above, it is possible to permit only patients with certain patient and roster statuses in OSCAR to schedule an appointment. For example:
allow only active (AC) patients to schedule (e.g. for regular appointments)
allow only inactive (IN) patients to schedule (e.g. for intake appointments)
allow only rostered (RO) patients to schedule (e.g. for after hours appointments)
Multiple Appointments On the Same Day
By default, patients have the ability to schedule multiple appointments on the same day. This is helpful for example, if clinicians want to tell certain patents to schedule back to back appointments next time, to address a complex issue, or if a medical concern worsens within the course of the same day.
Alternatively, is an option to configure the following rules:
A maximum of 1 appointment per day per clinician
A maximum of 1 appointment per day for any clinician
Limiting the Number of Appointments
It is an option to limit
(A) how many appointments
(B) are scheduled within any given period of time
(C) for a set of appointment types and
(D) for a set of clinicians.
Some examples of how these rules are used in practice:
allow a maximum of 5 intake appointments a week for a particular physician
allow a maximum of 2 annual physicals a day for a particular physician
allow a maximum of 1 well baby visits every 15 minutes, for any physician within the clinic
allow a maximum of 3 pending appointments in the future
there MUST be another billed appointment within the past year for this patient specifically
Templates
It is an option to create short templates that apply repeatedly over the course of a clinic day.
Some examples of how these rules are used in practice:
Every hour, schedule five 10 minute appointments, then a 10 minute break
Every hour, schedule three 15 minute regular appointments, then reserve the last 15 minutes for an urgent appointment
This feature is designed to correspond in many ways to OSCAR EMR's scheduling templates, to accomodate clinics that make use of this feature.
Residents, Locums, and Additional Walk-in Physicians
Residents, locums, and multiple walk-in physicians can be accommodated in multiple ways.
For example, it is common to deploy resource groups to enable patients to readily schedule with any available physician from a group of physicians. The example to the right shows how a walk-in clinic might enable patients is schedule with any physician, or a particular one if the patient has a preference.
Family practices can also use a similar approach to schedule patients with a particular physician, or their short or long-term locums, while simultaneously communicating to patients they might be seen by not their MRP.
It is an option to also hide this consideration entirely, an approach commonly taken by clinics offering urgent after-hours clinics.
Double or Triple Bookings
Some clinics need to deliberately double or triple book. For example, it may be that three 15 minute appointments every 15 minutes is the most appropriate way way to schedule a particular clinician.
It is an option to configure some or all clinicians to allow multiple simultaneous bookings to achieve this outcome. In some cases, it may make sense to pair this feature with our Limit Rules feature discussed above, to achieve a slightly different outcome. For example, if a clinician would like to schedule up to eight 10 minute appointments every hour, this could be achieved by:
first allowing this physician to be double booked (thus allowing up to 12 appointments every hour)
then applying a limit rule of max 8 appointments per hour
While this feature of Veribook can be enabled by clinics independently via the instructions above, we recommend speaking with your account manager first before deploying.