Appointment Types

The Type of appointment can be used to change the background colour of the appointment to distinguish it at a glance from other appointments. It can also be used to automatically assign multiple slots for a particular type of appointment.

Commonly used types might be 'New Patient', 'Follow Up', 'Post Op', 'Theatre', etc.

To Set-Up

You can add, delete and modify different Types by selecting 'Modify' in the Type popup menu.

This will open the window shown here:

To set the background colour for a particular Type, select the Type from the list on the left, then click on the coloured bar containing the Type name on the right.

Use the Delete and Add Type buttons to delete or add a new Type.

Tip: Create a Type called 'Clear' and set the background colour to White. You can then use this type to 'Un-Type' an appointment.

You can specify how many slots you want the Type to fill if it is applied to a patient appointment. e.g. New Patients take 30 mins, which is 2 slots (if your appointment intervals are set to 15mins).

If you set up a Type called exactly 'No Appointments' then patients cannot be booked over this type.

If you set a Type called exactly 'Antenatal', and apply it to a patient appointment, the gestation displays in the appointment cell.

Using Types

Once you have set up your Types there are two ways to use them

1. To organise your patients

2. To organise your diary

1. To Organise your Patients

You can organise your Patients using Types so at a glance you can see which Patients are, New, for Follow-up, Theatere, etc., just by the background colour of the cell.

Using Types will also block off the specified number of cells (see Appointment Type Set Up) of a Patient appointment. To allocate a Type to a Patient appointment, highlight the required appointment, then select the Type from the Type drop down menu.

This will block off the nominated number of cells (provided these cells are available below the appointment), and changes the background colour of the appointment.

An Appointment Type report can be generated through Appts > Appts Type Report. This will show how many patients of each Type have been booked in a given time period. It will also report on Non Patient Appointment Types in the Non-Patient Appointments tab.

2. To Organise your Diary

Types can also be used to organise times of unavailability or to block off Theatre times for patients to be booked into.

For example, let's say the Doctor operates on Mondays from 1pm to 5pm. Highlight the cells from 1pm to 5pm and select the Type you have set up from the Type menu, e.g Mater OT (Figure 1). This will change the colour of these cells and patients can be booked in these time slots with the colour remaining (Figure 2).

Figure 1                        Figure 2

You can also group and ungroup this time block as desired by using the Grouping button.

This time block can then be set up to repeat every Monday (see Repeating Appointments).