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I have sent in a suggestion to AC multiple times regarding the following MUST HAVE.
We need for AC to develop (in their spare time) a way to be able to see ALL of the patient's appointments. PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. Cancelled, rescheduled and No Show. We do not have a leg to stand on if a patient wants to argue about their appointment dates and time.
We made a mistake and started using the RESCHEDULE tab. Now, we can not see when the original appointment was.
We tried to create a new provider (Cancel) but, that doesn't work well either.
We have so many patients that reschedule their appointments. One patient we have reschedules it at least 3 times before finally coming in.


That is my suggestion for the day and if they are anything like opinions well,everyone has one.

Thank you
Alley

Good afternoon Alley.

This is actually already a feature that exists in Amazing Charts.

From the main screen of Amazing Charts, search from the patient list and highlight the patient in question. Next, click on the binoculars icon below the patient list. This will pull up a list of all past, current and future appointments for that specific patient. I've attached a screenshot to this reply to show you.



However if the appointment has been cancelled or rescheduled, the original appointment will not show in this list. As far as keeping documentation for rescheduled or cancelled appointments, you can choose to send a notification to a specific user. You can then save that message to the patients chart.

Please let me know if you have any questions!

Chris

Hi Ally,

To piggyback off what Chris posted about, I would recommend making appointment types for "Cancelled" or "NoShow". Using this idea, when a patient cancels or no-shows, the staff would just change the appointment type to that appointment type. This will allow the appointment to stay on the schedule and the visit to show in the binoculars button.

If the patient reschedules, use the comment field in the schedule to note that it was a reschedule. This will also show on the binoculars screen.

Hope that helps.

^^^^That is what we do and it works well.

I have a couple of questions and potential suggestion for improvement on this subject as well. We use both AC and ACPM and they don't freely exchange information with each other; it's a little frustrating, so I'm with Ally on this whole serial rescheduling topic.

I don't want to have to change the appointment type to keep the appointment in the history. Doesn't that defeat the purpose of having a Did Not Keep Appointment feature? It just junks up the patient's Medical chart when the doctor/admin saves those messages to it.

We use ACPM and it does record the appointment changes, but those changes don't document in AC. If I change an appointment in ACPM, where I'm supposed to, the doctor doesn't get a notification unless I have both ACPM and the current days AC schedule up on the screen at the same time. I have to cancel the appointment in AC first if I want the doctor to get the alert that it's been canceled or if the patient DNKA. If I change the appointment in ACPM by rescheduling, he doesn't know at all; unless I tell him or send him a message in AC.

1. Is there a report available that would show all the scheduling changes in a patient's history, regardless of the reason type, i.e. patient canceled versus office canceled, patient rescheduled/office rescheduled, No Show, etc in either program or both?
2. Can additional reasons for appointment changes be added to AC? Ex: Patient Cancel, Office Cancel, Patient Reschedule, Office Reschedule, DNKA.
3. Is it possible to create a report type that allows this kind of search? You input the patient you want to search and you select the kind of appointments you want to see for All Time or a Date Range.

I think it could be a useful function. I know we used it a lot in the last practice I was in with their EHR (PrimeSuite from Greenway - lots of bells and whistles, but big $$$$$ to buy) for all of our serial reschedulers - we frequently had patients on meds that needed to be monitored but would reschedule their appointments over and over and still call for refills and the doctors would be none the wiser about how many times the patient had changed their appointment. On many occasions the front office staff would run that report and show it to the doctors so they could see just how often their patient was changing appointments. Sometimes we would print that report and have the doctor show it to the patient and they'd ask the patient to cut it out. I know I wouldn't mind seeing it available as a customizable report.

Chris, I know about the "SEARCH APPOINTMENTS." That feature works well but, as you said it is the reschedule and the cancellations that we also need to be able to see without having to create a cancel or no show provider. I do like some of Trista's suggestions. If we could search in reports to find every appointment that was ever made for the patient that would be great but, having the information pull up when we "search appointments" is the ideal thing.
Thank you for replying.
I understand that there is a lot that goes into making or changing programs. I hate that a lot of time and resources have to be spent making sure AC is useful for those that are burdened by MIPS.
Thanks again.
Let me say something good. There is a lot great about AC. I have worked with 3 other EHR systems and AC has a lot of great things and people.

Alley
Alley