Schedule Appointments

The Schedule Appointment screen contains the following sections that are documented in this chapter:

The main appointment screen shown below is used to create, modify, and delete patient appointments. In addition, the scheduler supports the scheduling of Blocks Of Time. These special times can be utilized for reserving times for any particular purpose. Blocks Of Time are also an alternate method to indicate that a provider will not be available.

Patient Information

The topmost area is the Patient Information section. Along the top, the current day/date as well as the selected day/date are both listed. Buttons are included in this section to select or create new patients, enable defining blocks of time, and to open both the Day Schedule screen and the Week Schedule screens. When a patient is created or selected, their demograpic information and financial balance is displayed.

A color chart is displayed indicating the colors that have been set in Scheduler Preferences for single, double, double+ bookings and blocks of time.

Patient Appointment List

The Patient Appointment List displays all appointments for the selected patient. The appointments are listed in chronological order, newest at the top of the list and oldest at the bottom. A double-click on a row in this list will open the Edit Appointment panel, which allows editing or deleting of the selected appointment. If the Blocks Of Time button has been selected in the Patient Information section, this table will display the scheduled Blocks Of Time for all providers.

Edit Appointment Panel

The Edit Appointment Panel is the main interactive area where appointment or Block Of Time information is entered. The following fields are included:

• New Appointment Button : Begin editing a new appointment.
• Visit - Chief Complaints : Up to 100 characters can be entered to describe the reason for the appointment.
• Default Duration : Provider default duration set in Preferences. This field is non-editable.
• Default Increment : Provider default increment set in Preferences. This field is also non-editable.
• Note : Up to 150 characters can be entered as general notes/text.
• Appointment Start Time : The hour, minute, AM/PM, and duration for the appointment are available for selection. The hours that are selectable in the list are limited to office hours that are available for the currently selected day. The available office hours are set in the Office Hours screen. The minutes are all multiples of the provider increment which is set in the Scheduler Preferences screen. The items in the duration list are also multiples of the provider increment.
• Appt Status : This area provides a group of small selectable buttons for setting the appointment status. Options include Scheduled, Re-scheduled, Closed, Missed, Cancelled, Late, and Note Sent. This status field can be used in any fashion that the office would like to use it.
• Physican : This popup list contains all providers defined in TreFre Medical. When a provider is selected, the Day Schedule Table on the right side of the screen is updated to the office hours and appointments for the new provider.
• Facility : A popup of all facilities defined in TreFre Medical. This field can be used in any fashion that the office would like to use it.
• Date Selector : The date selector for the current appointment. As this field is modified, the Day Schedule Table on the right side of the screen is updated to the office hours and appointments for the new date for the selected provider. A 1 second delay is built in so that the user can scroll through days (by hitting the UP and DOWN arrows) without the overhead of updating the table on each day that the user may wish to skip.
• Save and Copy Button : Save the current appointment and create a duplicate. A typical use of this operation is rescheduling an appointment. If a patient has missed or cancelled their appointment, this button will allow saving the old appointment with the appropriate misssed or cancelled status (for patient historical purposes) and automatically creating a new appointment with all of the original appointment information included. Simply edit the original appointment, set the appointment status to the correct status such as missed, and then select the Save and Copy Button button.
• Cancel Button : Cancel editing the current appointment.
• Save Button : Save the current appointment that is being edited. All changes will be reflected in the Patient Appointment List above.
• Delete Button : Attempt to delete the current appointment. Some offices wish to track old appointments for historical purposes and deletion (inadvertent or intentional) of appointments is not preferred. For this reason, in the Scheduler Preferences, a set of buttons is provided that allows the setting of a preference indicating what to do when the user attempts to delete an appointment. The valid choices are to Just Delete, Mark as Missed, Mark Cancelled, and Mark Note Sent. The default is Just Delete and if this is the currently saved preference, the appointment is deleted. If any other setting has been saved, the following dialog will provide the choice to obey the saved preference, delete the appointment, or cancel.


If the Block Time button was selected in the Patient Information section, rather than editing an appointment, a block of time will be edited. In that case, several of the labels listed above will be replaced by labels relating to blocks of time.

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Day Schedule Table

The Day Schedule Table on the right side of this screen displays all of the times of day that appointments or blocks of time can be assigned for the CURRENT provider on the SELECTED day. The beginning and ending hours for the table are defined in the Office Hours screen. The time increment used to create all the different time cells is defined by the Provider Increment that has been saved in the Edit Provider Section 2 screen. In the example on the right, the starting and ending office hours for the current day are 8:00 AM and 6:00 PM. The provider increment is defined as 15 minutes.

All appointments and blocks of time are color-coded based on the choices that are also set in Scheduler Preferences. A color chart indicating these choices is displayed in the Patient Information section at the top of this screen. In this example, the time slots at 8:15, 9:15 and 9:30 are single booked, The time slot at 9:00 is double-booked. The time slots at 8:30 and 8:45 are more than double-booked. This situation may not occur in a traditional office but the TreFre Medical Scheduler supports it. The time slots between 12:00 and 1:00 and between 3:00 and 5:00 are repeating provider reserved times which were assigned in Provider Reserved Times screen. The time slot between 1:00 and 2:30 is a block of time that has been reserved.

When the mouse is placed over any colored time slot, some popup text is displayed that indicates either the patient last name and duration minutes for their appointment or the name of the reserved hours.

A mouse click on any time in the table will automatically set the hour, minute, AM/PM, and duration fields in the The Edit Appointment Panel to the appropriate value. This is a useful shortcut to set the time fields when creating a new appointment.

The cells bordered by the dark black box indicate the complete duration for the appointment or time slot currently being edited. Every time slot that is included within the duration of the currently edited appointment is boxed in this manner. For example: If the provider increment is 15 minutes and the appointment duration is 45 minutes, 3 consecutive time slots would be boxed. In the example on the right, the block of time between 1:00 and 2:03 is currently being edited. The provider day schedule can become very busy with single, double, double+ bookings, blocks of time, and scheduled reserved times. These black boxes are useful to easily determine which time cells are effected by the currently selected appointment.

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