Medisoft Office Hours Professional Find Open Time Slot for Physical Therapy Appointment Scheduling, Physician Scheduling, Mental Health Scheduling
The Find Open Time method for scheduling appointments is a robust method of searching for open appointment time slots, and allowing you to easily schedule appointments for the found slots.
This option is available by clicking the Edit menu and Find Open Time. You can also press [CTRL] – [F].
If you are using Office Hours (Standard), you will be able to search for an open time slot based solely on the length of the appointment, the day of the week, and the time range for the appointment. Those fields are all self explanatory.
Some fields will only appear if searching while in the Multi Provider-Resource view.
Reason: The Reason field will allow you to search for time slots that have been set aside for a specific reason. This process was completed during the Template setup. For example, if you have certain hours dedicated to new patients, this search field will find any open time slots that have a template set up with the reason code for new patients linked to them. You still have the ability to specify the time of day and day of the week, which would allow the person scheduling the appointment to accommodate requests from the patient.
Search For: The Search For option allows you to search the schedules of multiple providers at the same time. Many group practices will see patients as a group. It doesn’t matter which doctor the patient sees. If you wish to utilize this option, you will need to perform your search from within the Multi-View screen. If you perform the search from within any of the other views, you will not have this option available to you.
If you want to search for a slot for a single provider, select the Single field, and specify the provider whose schedule you wish to search.
If you want to search the schedule for all the providers on the screen but do not want to search the schedule for the resources on the screen, select All Providers Viewed.
If you want to search the schedule for all the Resources on the screen, but do not want to search the schedule for the providers on the screen, select All Resources Viewed.
If you want to base your search on both the Providers on the screen and the Resources, select All Providers and Resources Viewed.
Once you have entered your search criteria, press the Search button. You will return to the scheduler screen. The screen will begin scrolling through the dates, searching for an open time slot that fits the criteria you entered in your search routine. If none can be found, you will see a message similar to the one below.
| Tips and Tricks: The search option will search the calendar starting at the date showing on the calendar at the time the search was initiated. Additionally, the search will only go 3 months forward from that date when performing the search. If you need to search for time slots further in the future than three months, you will need to be viewing the future date you wish to be the beginning date of your 3 month time span. |
If an open slot is found that fits the criteria, your cursor will be placed in that slot. If this slot does not work for the patient, you can click the Edit menu and Find Next Open Time. You can also press [CTRL] – [N]. This will move the cursor to the next slot that fits the criteria entered into the search window.
This method for finding appointments is a very simple, automated way of finding time slots for various reasons, providers, and resources. It can, however be difficult if the patient is looking for appointments on specific dates. If the patient needs appointments for specific dates, you would be better off using the Calendar itself to find open time slots.
Scheduling and Billing For Physical Therapists
