How do I add a practitioner to the Scheduler?

The Oasis PMS allows you to add practitioners into a Scheduler (Appointment Book) using different "Views" in a similar way to having different physical books for appointments.

A View could represent a practitioner, or a number of practitioners.

Most Oasis PMS systems will have a "Main View" that attempts to list all practitioners, and maybe secondary views for the different days or different groupings of doctors from the Main View.

In general, the screen resolution of your computer and the screen mode selected in Oasis will dictate the number of columns you can have in the scheduler and still be able to view enough information about appointments to be useful. Generally, when in screen mode 00, you should have no more than six columns in the scheduler. When in screen mode eleven, you could have 8 to 10 columns per view.

Not all practices use the scheduler with practitioner columns. Some choose to use a "Rooms Processing" system where the columns represent surgeries or treatment rooms.

For the purposes of this "how to", we are looking at Practitioner-based columns, not surgery-based ones.

What are Doctors / Entities?

In the Oasis Scheduler, you will see references to doctors and entities. The reference to doctors relates to the Doctors in Network / Doctors in Branches defined in the system. When you add a practitioner to Oasis, you will create an entry in Doctors in the Network, and then another entry in Doctors in Branches - even if you are a single branch practice. The doctor you add into these tables is used for the purposes of billing patients either directly, or through a PHI fund and carries a unique Provider Number for billing purposes.

In some instances, a doctor may want the ability to "double book" using the scheduler. To do this, the doctor would need two columns in the appointment book. To have two columns in the appointment book, he must have two unique numbers. One for each column. Oasis achieves this by using an "entity" number as well as a doctor number. So Doctor 0003 could also have an entity number 0103 in the scheduler. No invoices will ever be raised for Doctor 0103, but appointments can be made for that doctor. To ensure accurate reporting of Doctor 0003's activity, against Doctor 0103, Oasis would list this "entity" as "Stats/List Doctor" 0003. All attendance data collected from the scheduler would actually relate to Doctor 0003 (as Doctor 0103 is only an entity within the scheduler).

To add a new doctor (or entity) to the Scheduler, select Preferences, My Time, Scheduler View Lines and select the Main View (if you have one).

You will see something similar to the above, where you can add (or delete) doctors/entities from the scheduler View. In this exercise, we are going to add a new Doctor 0004 (Dr Donald Dentist) to the scheduler.

You will notice the first field to be entered is the Sequence Number. The sequence number will dictate where the column will appear. In the example, we are going to add it as sequence 40, which will add the column to the right of the existing three columns. If you wanted to add the new doctor's column between Doctor 0002 and 0003, you could use sequence number 25 and the column would appear between Bob and Betty.

The second field is the Doctor/Entity number, and in this case, it is an actual doctor 0004 that is being added.

The Column Name will default to the actual doctor name, but you could enter anything here if you wanted.

The Working Days Code field is entered from the box that will display when you tab or enter to this field. In the example, Doctor 0004 will not be working Saturdays or Sundays.

Once you Apply the Working Days Code, you need to fill in the Button Name (the name that will appear on the button at the top right of the scheduler) and then the Stats/List Doctor number. It is usually the same as the Doctor number where you are setting up an actual doctor.

You could optionally assign a colour to the new column as a background colour.

Once you click OK to save the change, you will have your new practitioner added to the scheduler.

You will now be able to make appointments for your new practitioner.