From time to time a patient will call and ask you to schedule an appointment based on a specific criteria. For example - possible appointment available on Tuesday between 2 pm and 4 pm. Filopto can help you locate these types of requests easily.
Important: When using the Optional Enhanced Employee Module, the employee scheduler must have a time block associated with each provider defining when he is available or the scheduler Find Free Time function will return NO availability for the provider.
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How to use
Right click your mouse in the Scheduler view to get a pop-up menu. In this pop-up menu you will find the function "Find next free time".
You can also activate this function by using the tool bar icon 
By selecting the "Find next free-time" option, the following dialogue box will be displayed.
1) The first step is to identify the Patient you wish to schedule. You are presented with a Patient search screen.
2) You can either create a new patient using the New Patient File button or search and locate and existing patient. Once a patient is selected Filopto will either:
a) Show the Multi-Appointment option, if the patient selected has family members identified in his/her patient file (patient household list). This screen permit users to either create an appointment for the selected patient or create multiple appointment at the same time for other family members.
b) If the patient has no family members then the user is automatically shown the Find Available Time screen to locate an appointment time for the selected patient.
How to Use Family Member Appointment Wizard
The appointments algorithm used will schedule all family members to be seen during approximately the same time period, if possible. For example if multiple providers are involved, Filopto will attempt to schedule all family members during the same time period for all providers involved. Family member A to be seen at 9am with doctor A while family member B, a patient of Doctor B, to be seen also at 9 am, by doctor B. If all family members are patients of the same provider they will be scheduled sequentially.
The Wizard is divided into several sections. The first screen displays the Steps associated with creating multiple appointments (1), Information on the selected office to use and on the family members selected (2) and a list of the family members with the selected member highlighted in red (3).
1) Select the Office that is to be used (2).
2) For each patient to be scheduled, complete the fields in yellow. Place a check mark in the scheduler field for each patient to be scheduled, select the provider and appointment type.
3) Once all the required fields (yellow) are completed click the next button .
4) Select the preferred days of the week
Select the time of day to search , if none are specified (no check mark) Filopto will use the office open time period.
If you are using the Advanced Employee Manager providers time blocks, select the time block check mark or you may receive a message saying the doctor is not working for the day(s) selected.
If no time slots are available for the defined search criteria an error message will be displayed giving the opportunity to the user to change the search criteria. The message will attempt to identify possible issues.
5) Select from the available time slot the appointment date you wish to use.
6) Review the selected time slot and press Schedule Appointments button to create the appointments.
How to Use - Find Available Time
1) Enter the appointment search parameters in section one(1) of the screen and click on the Search for Free-Time button.
2) Select the appointment by highlighting it.
3) Select the Create a new appointment and close button to create the selected appointment
From this dialogue box you are able to enter your search for a specific appointment based on the criteria entered.
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Select Doctor for Appointment: select the doctor's schedule to use in the search. |
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Starting Date for Search: enter the starting date from which the search will begin. |
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Ending Date for Search: enter the ending date at which the search will end. |
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Starting Time of Day and Ending Time of Day: enter the time restrictions for the search. |
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Select the day(s) of the week to search for the patient appointment: place a checkmark for each day to search |
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Appointment Type: specify the type of appointment to be scheduled Note: If you do not allow this type of appointment to be scheduled during the period being searched, the results of the search will be null. |
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Appointment Time: The amount of time to reserve. |
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Depending on your system configuration the Time Block Search Option will display the various options available for searching: it is important that you review the options available since depending on the options chosen you may get different search results. |
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Search for Free-Time Button: This button will run the search request and will display, in the grid below it, all the possible times meeting your criteria. |
You can select the appointment time you wish from the grid list(2) and create an appointment for the patient by pressing the Create a new appointment and Close (3) button. To identify the appointment selected, use the fields: Appointment Date Selected and Appointment Time and Appointment End Time below the grid displaying the available list of appointments.
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Warning:
If you are using Filopto DE or EE edition with multiple offices, this feature will only work if you have the optional Advanced Employee Manager module. The results given (if you do not have the Advanced Employee Manager) is the system will not know in which office the provider is for a given time and date. The resulting appointment may be made in the wrong office.
If you are licensed for the Advanced Employee Manager make certain that you have created at least one time block identifying when the provider is working. If no time block is identified for the Provider the search result will be a blank list since the Provider is never available.
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