The Weekly Office Hours screen is accessed from the Configuration->Office Hours menu and is utilized to define the weekly hours that the office is open.
The following sections of this screen are documented:
| Sections: | |||||
| Hours Defined | Creating Hours | Weekly Days/Times | Assign To Provider | Edit Day/Times | Provider Reserved Times |
Office hours are defined in TreFre Medical by associating a set of days and times with a name. These Named hours are then scheduled to be active for a range of days during the year by associating them with a start and end date. Every office will need to determine and name the office hours for each provider in the practice. Some examples of named office hours might be "Summer Hours" or "Fall Hours".
In the simplest case, one Named office hours can be defined a single time and scheduled to always be in effect for a provider. In more sophisticated cases, several defined office hours may span over an entire duration of time.
In order to keep the scheduling interface somewhat simple, the dates that office hour assignments are assigned must not overlap. For example: Summer hours may be defined from June 1 through August 31 and non-summer hours may be defined from September 1 to May 31.
Named office hours are provider specific. If an office has more than a single provider, Named hours must be assigned to each. The same named hours can be assigned to each provider. There is no way to generically assign a named set of hours to the entire office with a single assignment. Each individual provider assignment must be done.
The top section of the Office Hours screen contains various controls to define new and manipulate existing named hours. There is a named hour selector list that lists all hours that have been defined and there is a set of buttons to manipulate the named hours. The following buttons are available:
This table is used to set the daily start and end times for the named hours. For each of the 7 days in the week, the starting and ending times are set. By setting both the starting and ending times to be the same, no hours will be available for the given day. The following buttons are included:
The Hours Assignment table at the bottom of the screen is utilized to display all the pairs of currently assigned named hours to providers. The table displays the provider name, the name of the hours assigned to the provider, and both the starting and ending date when the hours are in effect. The following buttons are available:
This portion of the screen is used to set the actual start and end time for the currently selected day in the Weekly Days/Times table. There are 3 sliders available, Day, Start Time , and End Time. When defining Office hours, the Day slider should not be used since all 7 days must be defined. When editing days for Provider Reserved Times, this slider sets the day field in the table row.
The Start Time slider should first be used to set the time of day when the office will open. After the start time is set, the time values in the End Time slider will adjust and scale automatically so that the first selectable time for the end hours will be the start time (the final hour of the day can not be before the start time). The Set No Hours button is just a shortcut to set the start and end time to the same value. By doing this, the currently selected day in the table will not have any hours available.
The process for allocating specific days and times for provider personal or reserved time is similar to setting Office Hours. The same screen is reused since the concept of creating named hours, defining days and times, assigning Named reserved hours to providers, and specifying start and end activation dates are all the same. There are a few differences that can be noted the image displayed below.
The first thing to notice is that in the top section, the Color button is enabled and the section is actually colored. Unlike Office Hours, reserved times need to be displayed in all TreFre Scheduler appointment screens. To provide an easy to understand interface for all appointment screens, a color (similar to appointment single, double... colors) is assigned to all reserved times. When an appointment screen is displayed that contains a provider reserved day or time, the appropriate table boxes or cells are colored to indicate the time reservation.
When the Color button is selected, a chooser is displayed allowing you to interactively pick a color to associate with the named reserved hours. In the example, an aqua like color has been selected for the Medical Conference named reserved hours.
You will notice in the Weekly Days/Times table in this illustration that the Medical Conference hours have been defined for a particular Monday through Wednesday. Also notice in the Assign To Provider table at the bottom that the Medical Conference reserved hours have been assigned to a provider for specific dates. When this screen is opened to set reserved times, the Assign To Provider table only lists named reserved times. When opened to set Office Hours, this table only lists named Office Hours.
In the Weekly Days/Times section of this example, the Remove Day and Add Next Day buttons are enabled. Unlike Office Hours which must contain all 7 days, reserved days and times can span any number of days and times. The Remove Day button will remove the currently selected day in the table. The Add Next Day will determine the currently selected day in the table and automaticaly add the next day to the table. This is useful, for example, if you want to reserve a conference for five successive days. Simply set the first day and hours, then just utilize the Add Next Day button four times. The Day slider in the Edit Day/Times section can also be used to change the day for the currently selected row in the table.
In the sample week schedule below, the aqua colored cells indicate the reserved days and times for the Medical Conference and the yellow squares indicate a reserved time that is named Lunch. Similarly, any Day or Appointment screens would use these same colors to indicate the reserved times.
The Schedule Reserved Time screen is accessed from the Configuration->Schedule Reserved Time menu.