Fit-in Appointments

Add fit-in appointments for patients without an appointment who are seeking medical attention.

Before you begin

A fit-in appointment is one that is scheduled inbetween two standard, booked appointment slots. A fit-in appointment may be required if for example a patient arrives unannounced and needs urgent attention. A fit-in appointment may also occur if a patient scheduled an appointment online, and it then conflicted with an appointment simultaneously scheduled by your staff at the practice. In the example below, a fit-in appointment has been created for Greg Durant, between George Donnelly's appointment at 10:00 and Heather Andrews' appointment at 10:15.

Procedure

  1. Open the Appointment module, either:
    • Click Appointment Book
    • Select Waiting Room > Appointment Book.
  2. If you have multiple Appointment Books in use, select the Appointment Book you want to use via the associated drop-down list.
  3. From the Practitioner list, select the practitioner to whom you want to assign the patient. The image above indicates that the appointment schedule for Dr. A Practitioner is currently selected.
  4. Select a time slot in the date/time matrix in which to schedule the appointment.
  5. To add a fit in appointment:
    1. Select the time slot prior to where you want to schedule the fit-in appointment.
      In the example, we needed to schedule a fit-in appointment for Greg Durant, when he arrived unannounced on Thursday at 10:00. Prior to his arrival, there were already appointments scheduled for 10:00 (George Donnelly) and 10:15 (Heather Andrews), and there were no available appointment slots between those times; we needed to fit in Greg's appointment after George's (because George was already being seen to), but before Heather's. Therefore, the slot prior to the fit-in appointment was George's at 10:00, so this is the slot we selected.
    2. Then either:
      • Select Appointment > Add Fit Appointment
      • Press CTRL+A.

Results

A new appointment is scheduled for your patient one minute after the last 'standard' appointment slot commenced. Fit-in appointments are always scheduled for one minute after the last standard appointment. In the example above that the fit-in appointment is scheduled for 10:01.

What to do next

Continue to create the appointment, as if it were a standard appointment.