Linking Appointments to Patients

Manually link an appointment to a patient record.

About this task

Sometimes you might need to manually link patients in the Appointment Book with patient records in the Pracsoft database. This is usually not necessary because most patients you schedule appointments for are already in your Pracsoft database. However, you might need to link the patient and appointment manually if something like this occurs:
  1. A patient phones for an appointment. You open the Appointment Book to schedule an appointment for them. However, the patient doesn't exist in your Pracsoft database because they are a new patient.
  2. You don't have time to create a new patient record for them, capturing all their details over the phone at this time, so you just schedule a new appointment for them.
  3. Later when the patient arrives at the practice, you create a new record for them in Pracsoft, capturing all their details.
  4. In the Appointment Book, you locate the patient's appointment and link the appointment to the new patient's record you just created.

Procedure

To link an appointment to a patient's record:
  1. Open the Appointment module, either:
    • Click Appointment Book.
    • Select Waiting Room > Appointment Book.
  2. Select the appointment you want to link to a patient's record.
    Tip:
    The phone number recorded for the appointment is not saved when the appointment and patient's record are linked. To avoid losing the phone number, copy it into the Note field.
  3. Either:
    • Select Appointment > Link.
    • Right-click the appointment and select Link from the menu.
    • Press F3.
  4. In the Select Patient window, select the patient you want to link to the selected appointment.
  5. Click Select > Yes.

Results

The appointment is linked to the patient record.