ChiroPulse365 Chiropractic Software Blog

The Scheduler is your computerized daybook that integrates with ledger and patient data. It is customizable, including the setting hours, breaks and appointments per time slot for each day, for each doctor. The Scheduler was specifically designed to allow the vast majority of daily functions to be performed from this single screen (i.e., scheduling, posting charges, patient payment/co-payment, walkout receipt, access to patient careplan/travel card, etc.).

The Scheduler is also integrated with the Patient Claim Wizard & Ledger. You can set your default appointment information for each patient, for each “claim”, in the Claim Wizard. This includes default charges, times, etc. Typical appointment information that can be collected in the scheduler includes treatment codes (CPT, Multi & User codes) and treating doctors. This can streamline data entry, saving time & reducing errors. The scheduled charges/services (CPT, Multi & User codes) will be posted to the Patient’s Ledger when you set the visit status to kept (from waiting or treating). From the ChiroPulse start page “MyOffice” click the top icon bar “View scheduler” to launch the scheduler window. The scheduler is self-contained in an independent window to allow for quick return to office & patient tasks not scheduler related.

Scheduler  Overview ~ what each button & clickable item does:  

dimmed choices until a patient is selected

• Top Pulldown menu – shown above the top menu can be navigated by mouse or keyboard. Use the ALT key to show the keyboard accelerators (the underlined letters that are pressed after ALT key to jump to the menu item directly) or hotkeys (ie. CTRL+K to mark the selected appointment as Kept & post to ledger). Note that some menu items might be dimmed (not selectable) until a specific patient is selected.  See the bottom photo up above.
  • Change Status – when a patient is selected in the scheduler you can use this to quickly change the status of the appointment. You can also use the keyboard hotkeys (click menu to see hotkeys). You typically change a status to “waiting” as a patient arrives, then “treating” when they are assigned to a room, then kept to post charges. Use no-show, canceled or rescheduled when needed. Never delete an appointment unless it was made by mistake.
    Reschedule is a cancellation with a replacement appointment. Use the reschedule menu to quickly set the reschedule date. Remember when “rescheduling” an appointment a new slot is inserted since the rescheduled slot is now available (that pending appointment is marked “rescheduled” to show the change of appointment time/date).
    

    New Reschedule menu addition to quickly reschedule from scheduler window.

  • Open Patients – when a patient is selected in the scheduler you can use this to jump to various patient related windows & features,including “find all future appointments” for this patient. Many hotkeys are available (some of which are used in many windows such as opening patient or claim wizard).
  • Visits/Payments/Walkout – has useful tools for ledger items and printing walkouts for patients.
  • Calendar is used to change days via keyboard without grabbing for the mouse
  • Open Patient’s Travelcard is enabled when a patient is selected. This quickly opens their travelcard via keyboard.
  • Document Viewer will open the document management system for the selected patient. If documents exist linked to the patient these will be visible, or you can quickly import/index documents from here.
  • Help brings up some help via the Member Center that relates to scheduling
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• Button bar (context sensitive) – the first icon/button is “to ChiroPulse” if no patient is selected or “to Patient” if a patient is selected. To Patient is handy since it takes you to PatientTab/Finder to work with the selected patient.
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• Print Daybook opens a print preview of the selected scheduler view ready to print or export
• Refresh page reloads the scheduler. This is useful if you step away from your desk & want to see if anyone using another ChiroPulse computer has updated the schedule.
• Set Vacation opens the scheduler override window where you can set vacations (days off) or alternate/temporary hours for any doctor or all doctors.
• Yearly View opens the yearly visual to see your days off, standard hours and days with alternate/temp hours. You can also import past appointments (when upgrading) from here and set vacations.
• Setup Hours is where you setup the standard, typical hours, slots, times, etc. for each doctor/clinician in your office. When setting up hours you should have the exact number of available slots desired for each doctor on the scheduler so that you can quickly double-click an open appointment “slot” to schedule a patient.
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• Open New Scheduler launches a new scheduler window. This is useful when you want to view a particular date range or certain parameters while keeping your main scheduler open to save time & clicks!
• Close All Schedulers exits all schedulers and returns you to the ChiroPulse365 main window.

• Today button – click to view all appointments for today. Click the arrow buttons to go forward/back one day or one week.
• Back/Forward arrows – jumps back/forward one day or week
• Date view calendar link (Apr 24, 2009 in example above) – click to open the pop-up Calendar to change the date to view appointments for

  

• Hide Slots X minutes or Earlier – hides all slots and intervals prior to the time shown. Useful for busy schedules or in the afternoon so you don’t see all the morning activity.
• Hide Unscheduled Slots – hides all open slots. Useful for busy schedules who jump around a lot and use the slot selection window to find open slots. Useful for the doctor to see only actual appointments. This is set as a computer-specific preference (also changed in Global Preferences — This PC)
• Set Views button – Allows you to set the appointment list options and configure which appointment status’s are visible. For example the front desk might want to see all unscheduled time slots whereas the doctor might only want to view “treating” and “waiting” appointments without open time slots.
• Views/Daybook dropbox – Select the appointment option parameter set to view. The daybook mode mimicks the typical printed daybook with open time slots visible to double-click & enter appointments.
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• Patient find dropbox & F3 button – Select the patient to view the appointments for, or select “all patients” to view all appointments scheduled for all patients.
• Doctors selection dropbox – Select the doctor to view the appointments for, or select “all doctors” to view all appointments scheduled for all doctors.
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• Edit selected appointment (or double-click on the selected appointment) opens up the appointment editor so you can make changes with the codes to post, edit the appointment note or change the status.
  
• New appointment is used when all slots are filled so you can no longer double-click an open slot to create a new appointment. You can preselect the doctor & time by selecting a slot for the doctor/time then clicking the new appointment button. For example if you click the 9:00/LGD slot then click “new appointment” a new slot will be ready to be inserted for 9:00 for dr LGD.
  
• Clone selected appointment lets you quickly clone an appointment to quickly enter many appointments for a patient. After pressing “Clone selected appointment” a  new Clone pop-up menu appears to allow you to directly clone with less window jumping!
  

  New Clone Button Menu for easier cloning direct from scheduler.

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• Launch Waiting Alert opens a small utility that checks for appointments marked “waiting”. Used on network ChiroPulse computers this is very useful so you can work on your computer and be notified with a small popup when a patient is ready & “waiting”
  

  

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The Appointment List shows the appointments for the selected day and all available slots (unless “hide open slots” is selected or “unscheduled intervals” are turned off). One appointment is shown per row/line so in this example above you can see three (3) appointments are visible with two (2) open slots (9:20am and 9:40am). For each appointment, details are provided including: time, patient name, Dr., status, note, and CPT code. Open slots are shown in the “daybook” mode.

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Right-click popup menu for more choices as well as add/delete selected slot, view CPT, view Copay and more options set per computer.You can see the estimated copay dollar value, the * asterisk, or hide copays and see an x instead (to signify they are hidden).

scheduler popup menu choices for setting copay view

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The Reassign Appointment List shows appointments which were previously scheduled but require rescheduling since the doctor/office has a vacation day or temporary hours. Double-click to view & reschedule these patients.
Edit & New buttons are used to edit the selected appointment or create a new appointment. Use the Clone button to duplicate the selected appointment. Cloned appointments will open the appointment editor with all the previous info (Dr., CPTs, etc.) so you can choose the new time and date.

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appointments that require immediate attention

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Scheduler related Preferred Options – new tab added named “For This PC” which shows all customizations available per individual ChiroPulse365 computer in your office. Most of the Preferred Options are set per office (shared between all users on a network), ChiroPulse365 also allows customization for each actual user’s computer in your office as well!

MyPC tab in Preferred Options to review settings.

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Scheduler Appointment Creation – Prompt which doctor to use when adding an appointment when the selected slot does not match the patient’s default treating doctor. You can quickly select either doctor, without interruption or further slot selection. Soon Global Preferences will be added to allow you customize the prompts & actions.

more prompts when entering patients

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Setup Scheduler & Doctor’s Office Hours

Use this to setup the standard & typical hours for each doctor in your office.

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Scheduler Auto Logic

Once an appointment is marked kept you will see prompts regarding the visit (such as expired claim or visit totals exceeded), possible capitations or other reminders. You will be prompted to save/post the charges to ledger as well as enter copayments, payments and/or print walkout receipts!

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Appointment Status – Recommended Usage

Each appointment has a status. Each new appointment is set to “pending”. From the Appointment status combo box select the
appropriate status from the following choices if necessary. Note that the use of the pop-up menu (mouse button 2) from the
Scheduler page provides a shortcut to quickly change the status. Status types:

• Kept - Select when the appointment is kept, after services are rendered. Note – This applies any CPTs to the patient transaction ledger.
• Waiting - Select to put the patient in the “waiting list” queue. This will provide for a method of viewing patients who are awaiting treatment.
• No show – Select when the patient did not keep their appointment or reschedule another appointment.
• Cancellation - Select when the patient cancels the appointment but did not reschedule the appointment.
• Rescheduled - Select to mark the appointment as rescheduled and open the appointment edit window to enter the rescheduled appointment.

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Adding & Deleting Codes/charges when saving an appointment

Each appointment can have codes attached that will be posted to the ledger when the appointment is marked “kept”. When scheduling a new appointment the patients default codes (for their latest claim set in claim wizard page-1) are inserted into the pending appointment.

If you are unsure which treatments were done or which codes will be posted to the ledger simply keep the appointment marked “treating“. This allows you to quickly visualize any actual patient treatments that need to be marked kept & posted later on or the following day.

When editing an appointment you can quickly change, add, delete or reorder codes for an appointment.

• Press the [Code] button to toggle the sort order between Code number and description
• From the Code dropbox select each Code to be performed during the appointment.
  Note – To select a CPT from the combo box you must first select CPT radiobutton. You can enter several CPTs if
  necessary. Likewise, to select a Multi code, select the Multi radiobutton.
• View the list of Codes to be performed during the appointment and use Delete to remove Codes

Team Pulse Scheduler, Tips & Hints Scheduler