User Guide — Managing Schedules — Scenarios

 

On January 1st, you applied Dr. Xaverian's "Open M, T, W" template to the Main Street department on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. You soon realize that you were supposed to apply it to the Forest Street department.

 

Recommendation:  

1. Display the Manage Applied Templates page and select the "Open M, T, W" template.
2. Click Roll Back to remove the template from the Main Street department.
3. Display the Build & Apply Templates: Existing Templates page and locate the "Open M, T, W" template. Click the apply link.
4. Apply the template to the Forest Street department.

 

On January 1st, you applied a template for Dr. Jones for April through June. Later that day, you realize that you were supposed to apply that template through August.

 

Recommendation:  

 

If you discovered the error before patients were scheduled in the new slots, display the Manage Applied Templates page to modify the date range of the application. Change the end date to August 31st.

 

Otherwise, use the Build & Apply Templates: Existing Templates page to locate the template and apply the same template again from July through August.

  

 

On January 1st, you applied all of Dr. Smith's templates for the entire year. In June, she told you that beginning on July 1st, she would like to start her day at 8:00 a.m. instead of 9:00 a.m. and end her day at 4:00 p.m. rather than 5:00 p.m.

 

Recommendation:  

1. Create a new template that starts at 8:00 a.m. and ends at 9:00 a.m. and apply it from July 1st until the end of the year.
2. Display the Manage Appointments page to delete all slots in this template between 4:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. Any patients that are scheduled in deleted slots will appear on your Appointments to Reschedule worklist.

 

Dr. Collins would like to change from a Monday/Wednesday schedule in the Downtown office to a Monday/Thursday schedule, beginning next month.

 

Recommendation:

1. Display the Manage Appointments page to delete all Wednesday slots in the template for Dr. Collins.
2. Use the Build & Apply Templates: Existing Templates page to find the template that you originally applied to Mondays and Wednesdays.
3. Click the edit link. Change the name of the template if necessary.
4. Click Save & Apply.
5. On the Build & Apply Templates: Set Recurrence page, apply the template to Thursdays, starting next month.

Note: There are now two applications of the same template, one for Mondays (because you deleted all Wednesday slots) and one for Thursdays. To make a change to the template itself, you would need to reapply it to both days.

 

 

 

Dr. Smith would like to make his schedules more generic. Therefore, he wants to change all "New patient—30 min" slots to "OPEN—15 min" slots as soon as possible. This change applies to only one template.

 

Recommendation:

1. Display the Manage Applied Templates page and select the correct template.
2. Click Modify.
3. Select an end date for phasing out the old pattern of slots.
4. Preview the change.
5. Review the statistics to see how many patients would appear on your Appointments to Reschedule worklist. If the number is too high, cancel and choose a later end date. After you find a date that won't involve too much patient rescheduling, make a note of the end date and apply the change.
6. Use the Build & Apply Templates: Existing Templates page to locate Dr. Smith's template.
7. Click the edit link to edit the template to reflect the new pattern of slots.
8. Click Save & Apply, starting the application on the day after the end date of the former version of the template. Use the appointments to reschedule workflow, if necessary. (See also: Appointment Rescheduling.)

Note: When changing the pattern of appointment slots, consider whether using the Manage Appointments page is feasible. With simple changes, the Manage Appointments page is the easiest option. When using the Manage Appointments page, however, the template must be updated so that when the template is next applied it reflects the new pattern of slots. In this scenario, using the Manage Appointments page is not feasible because the slots have different durations.

 

 

The rollback function deletes every slot created when you applied the template. It is intended to help you correct errors in a template when you first apply a template to a provider's schedule. After appointment slots are booked, however, the rollback function can create extra work for your schedulers. If appointments are already booked into the slots that you remove via the rollback function, these appointments appear on your Appointments to Reschedule worklist.  

 

Because using the rollback function can have major consequences, athenahealth strongly recommends that you click the Preview button and preview your changes before you click the Roll Back button. Pay close attention to the statistics at the top of the page — in particular, the number of patients to reschedule.  

 

If this number is large, you should consider using the Manage Appointments page to selectively manage slot changes rather than removing the entire template.

 

 

The modify function allows you to change the dates to which a template was applied and change the pattern of recurrence. The modify function is similar to the rollback function in that any appointment slots that were created when the template was first applied that fall outside the new date range or pattern of recurrence are deleted.

 

For example, suppose you applied a template to Mondays and Wednesdays from January 1st until June 30th, but now you want to remove Wednesdays from the schedule starting on April 1st. If you modify the template application to change the pattern of recurrence from Monday/Wednesday to Monday only, all Wednesday appointment slots from April 1st until the end of June are deleted.

 

Therefore, you must reschedule any appointments that were booked into the Wednesday slots from April 1st through June 30th. (See also: Appointment Rescheduling.)

 

Note: Modifying the template application does not delete appointment slots for past dates.

 

Now suppose that you want to extend the dates of the application from June 30th to August 31st. If you modify the template application to extend the date range into the future, this action affects Monday appointment slots from July 1st to August 31st.

 

Click Preview to view the impact of the change on scheduled patients. Pay close attention to the number of "Patients to be Rescheduled" and the number of overlapping slots. If you modify a template to extend the dates of the application, for example, you could run into another applied template. In this case, the Build & Apply Templates: Preview Schedule page shows how many overlapping slots there are.

 

Remember: When you apply one template on top of another, athenaOne adds new slots to the schedule. If this is not what you intended, consider other options such as rolling back the other template or using the Manage Appointments page to selectively delete existing slots.

 

 

If you need to make extensive changes to a schedule, athenahealth recommends that you roll back the template application and then reapply the template via the Build & Apply Templates: Set Recurrence page. Make sure to reschedule or cancel any appointments that appear on the Workflow Dashboard in the Appointments to Reschedule column as a result of your changes.

 

Note: If any template applications are missing from the list, they may have been created using the Manage Appointments page. In that case, you can use the Manage Appointments page to edit them.