Appointment Search

The Appointment Search tool allows Receptionists to see all available appointment book gaps and guides them progressively towards identifying the optimum gaps based on the patient's preferred dates & times of day. The Appointment Search is particularly beneficial for practices with complex appointment books, especially those with clinics, blocks and rooms used by more than one provider type (e.g. Dentist and Hygienist).

Appointment Search auto-displays the recommended day, session, and start times, but the Receptionist can flexibly change options in discussion with the patient.

The search returns appointment optimum options that are adjacent to others in the book, thereby preventing the appointment from being located in the middle of a large un-utilised smaller gap.

The Appointment Search can be launched from the Appointment Workflow Departure Bar and the Clipboard & Hold List. See Enabling Appointment Workflow for enabling the departure bar.

If the hold list contains multiple Appointments then right click an Appointment and select “Search”.

Multiple appointments in the Hold list: If two or more appointments are placed on the hold list and you click “Search All”, then the original multi-appointment search function will be used. In all other cases, the single appointment search will occur.

The search tool uses the patient appointment preferences (days and times) as recorded in the Patient Preferences area of the Patient File > Recalls tab. Any modified preferences in the search window for this appointment are NOT saved back to the patient file.

If an appointment is for a specific provider, but no suitable results can be found, the provider selection will allow you to change the search over to be for Any Dentist or Any Hygienist.

However if the appointment started out as being for Any Dentist, then the dropdown will allow you to select between Any Dentist or Any Hygienist or the patient's dentist or hygienist (if they have been set in the patient record).

To search for a different specific provider, you will need to close the search window and select a provider for the appointment.

If your appointment book uses Rooms (see: Setting Up Appointment Book Rooms) to book appointments the search preferences will contain a room selector.
If the appointment is already selected to be in a particular room, this will be defaulted, but if not it will be set to Any Room. Use the dropdown menu to select any specific room, or set it to Any Room.

For practices that use multiple Locations with Rooms, see Appointment Search with Multiple Locations

If your practice uses clinics, and has set some clinics in the future the search preferences will contain a "Clinics" selector. The default option is Matching Clinics and Open Space.

Recall Appointments default to the patients recall due date, and the earliest selectable date will be configured in the "up to xx days before" (usually 90 days) setting in the Recall setup.

For coordinated duty appointments, the search options will only appear if there is time selected for each provider type. e.g. With only dentist time selected, then only the dentist dropdown menu will appear.
See: Co-ordinated Duties Appointments for more details.

Please Note: Appointments placed in the Hold List/on the clipboard are not saved when you close the appointment book. If you try to close the appointment book and there are appointments in the Hold List, a warning will appear. You then have the opportunity to place these appointments in new slots or to click Yes and permanently delete them.