Trista,
This is one of those things where one can make a request to AC and see if they bite... if they do not, then it is up to us to come up with the best possible work around.
To some extent, what works will be dependent on your scheduler's workflow. As noted above, you want your schedulers to work fast, but trying to enter a patient as "new" when they are coming up as a duplicate (and therefore were likely previously inactivated) should be a signal to stop and take a look before giving them an appointment. Maybe not the "hard stop" that you are asking for ... but a signal to slow down and figure out what is up.
When we discharge a patient we create a "high alert" which shows up on the main screen, which of course is where scheduling is done.
Unfortunately I cannot seem to get the image to upload here, but please look at this post, scroll to the second image, and see what a "
red alert" looks like. It does catch your eye:
