This guide provides the following procedures:

Appointment Book Setup to cater for Theatre Bookings

Make a Theatre Booking

Change the order of Theatre Bookings

Print Theatre List

Using the 'Find Slot' Feature.

Appointment Book Setup for Theatre Bookings

Overview

The Appointment Book is a big part of your everyday workflow, and that is why it is imperative to configure appointments to your Practice’s requirements. The configuration determines a week’s plan, making appointments quick-and-easy to manage for each Practitioner. So, if a practitioner’s week includes theatre bookings, use the appointment book to your advantage - set theatre bookings as a preference within the Appointment Book setup.

 

Practitioner Appointment Book Setup for Theatre

Select Setup > Practitioner > Practitioner Details. The Practitioner Setup window appears. Select the practitioner you wish to configure settings for, and then select the Appointments tab.

 

To track a practitioner’s theatre bookings, you must add ‘Theatre’ to the practitioner’s list of Appointment Types. Select an available Appointment Type slot, and enter Theatre in the Description field, and add an abbreviation to the Abbrev field.

Within in the Usual Length field, indicate the length of time allocated for theatre appointments.

Click OK to confirm the changes.

Select Setup > Practitioner > Practitioner Details again, select the same practitioner, and then click the Appointment tab to continue working with setup.

 

Plan Configurations Screen Setup

Within the same Practitioners Setup window, click  The Plan Configuration window appears. This is where you define the availability of the selected practitioner for the week, or a cycle of weeks. The practitioner’s plan may already be established. However, you may wish to alter the current plan, or create a new plan to cater for the theatre appointment type.

 

Alter an existing plan, or create a new one now if required. If you require further assistance with creating plans, see Plan Configuration for more information.

Enter the time slots required for the new theatre type. Enter each commencing time separated by ‘comma-space’ e.g. 9:00am, 10:00am, 11:00am. This must be repeated for each day of the week in the cycle. If the same time slots are required, the copy-and-paste functionality is recommended.

Each type of appointment (per practitioner) can be represented by a different colour, displayed in the Appointment Book. For example, you could indicate that New appointments will be displayed in blue in a 9am, 9:45am, 10:30am, etc. time slot, whereas Theatre appointments will be in  orange in a 12:30pm, 1:30pm, 2:30pm, etc. time slot.



How this plan appears in the Appointment Book.

 

Click OK to confirm settings for the current week. If a second week is required, click again, and repeat the above steps. Each new week is entered and confirmed separately.

Repeat the above steps for each practitioner.

Making a Theatre Booking

Overview

Making a theatre booking follows the same procedure as all other appointment types. This can done via the Patient’s Record > Bookings margin menu item, or via the Practice Explorer > Appointment Book margin menu. The difference between these two methods is in how the appointment fields are pre-populated;

When coming via Bookings, click the New button and select the appropriate practitioner from the drop-down list.  The patient’s name is populated automatically.

When coming via the Appointment Book, and selecting the Practitioner, Date and Time slot of the first appointment (prior to adding an appointment), these fields are populated automatically within the new appointment screen. You must then select the appropriate patient.

Regardless of how you create a new appointment, it will be available in both Bookings and the Appointment Book (always cross referencing).

 

Procedure

For this example, the appointment is made via the Appointment Book.

Within the Practice Explorer, select the Appointment Book margin menu. This will automatically display today’s appointments for each practitioner.

From the Practitioner drop-down list, select the appropriate practitioner, and then from the calendar tool select the required date. All appointments recorded and available for that day will be displayed.

Example: Dr. Gisele Emmett has ‘New’ and ‘Review’ patients in the morning with 1 New appointment, and Theatre all afternoon with 1 Theatre appointment available at 4:30pm.

 

Click in the time slot to select the appointment time.

Either double-click the slot, or right-click it and select Add Appointment from the menu that appears to display the New Appointment Wizard.

 

Enter the patient’s surname into the Patient field, click the    button search for and select the correct patient.

The Type field defaults to ‘Theatre’ if the time slot selected was pre-configured as a Theatre time slot. If you discover that this slot was pre-configured as a different type, you can manually select ‘Theatre’ from the drop-down list instead.

The Duration will also default to the pre-configured duration, and can be modified manually if desired.

The Referring Doctor field automatically populates with the doctor associated with the patient's most recent, current referral (if attached to the patient’s record). You can create a new referral via this window if desired, by clicking the drop-down arrow within the Referring Doctor field, and then clicking

 

Tick the Make multiple recurring appointments check box if required.

Click Next A Comment field is provided for recording ancillary information regarding the patient’s theatre booking.

 

Click Next If there is a concern with the booking at this point a Review Appointment Warnings screen will display and advise.

Click Finish to record the booking. The new booking is also entered in Bookings within the Patient's record.

Print the Theatre List

Overview

Bluechip provides a report that will generate a Theatre List from the Appointment Book with the appointment type (preference) Theatre. This can be generated per-practitioner with or without comments.

 

Procedure

Within Bluechip, select Reports > Print. The Print Report window appears.

Locate the General non-financial Reports section, and then either the Appointment List (no comment) or Appointment List (with comment) report.

 

Click Next The Print Appointment List window appears. In the following example, the ‘no comment’ version of the report was selected.

 

On the Set Appointment List options screen; select the appropriate Practitioner.

Select the Appointment Type as Theatre, and then click Next

 

This will display the Set Print options. Select Printer or Screen, and then click Next

Using ‘Find Slot’

The Find Slot feature provides a more efficient away to search for the next available appointment for a specific appointment type (preference), providing you with a quick and easy way to find the next available theatre booking slot. This can be used for new bookings, or for rescheduling existing theatre bookings. This feature will only work if the Practice has entered predetermined appointment times within the plan setup. The Find Slot button is available from the Appointment Books and within an edit appointment wizard screen.

Either from the Appointment Book or an edit appointment wizard screen; click  This will display the Find Free Appointment Slot screen.

 

Depending on how you accessed this window, it may be pre-populated with data – you may need to select Practitioner and/or Preference (appointment type = ‘Theatre’ in this instance) if they are not already selected for you. The start date will default to the current appointment date or today’s date. Modify this if desired.

Click to commence the search. The search may take a moment. After the search has completed, the first twelve free slots will display in the Search Results section. If these slots are unsuitable, click Next to display the next twelve free slots.

Select your desired appointment slot by either clicking the dates and times on the left panel and then OK or by selecting an available time slot in the right hand panel and then clicking OK. You will be returned to the new or edit appointment wizard screen.

Complete the appointment wizard as usual and click Finish to record the new or edited Theatre Booking.