Scheduler

The TreFre Medical Scheduler, provides the ability to manage patient appointments, reserve blocks of time, set the business office hours, and schedule provider reserved/unavailable hours. This tool is a separate feature of TFM is requires an additional license to activate. Refer to the TreFre Inc. web site for licensing and purchasing information. The following sections appear on this page:

Scheduler

The scheduler is accessed from the Main Toolbar by selecting one of the scheduler buttons as illustrated on the right. Available buttons include:

• Appointment - This button will activate the Appointments screen where all patient appointments are managed. Appointments can be created, modified, listed, and deleted.
• Today - This button will open the Day Schedule screen which displays the provider's schedule for the current day. A PDF formatted output file providing details for an entire day is available for printing.
• Week - This button activates the Week Schedule panel which provides a view of the provider's entire week schedule.
• W+ Provides the same function as the Week button except his button displays the next week.
• W++ This button displays the week following the next week. Note that the W+ and W++ buttons will dynamically change to d+ and d++ if the Today button is selected. This allows easy access to successive days as well as weeks.

Provider Appointment Increment

Every provider has a predefined time increment (specified in minutes) that they may schedule patient appointments on. In order to keep the graphical interface in the various scheduler screens simple and easy to understand, valid choices for the provider increment have been limited to 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, or 60 minute intervals. For example: If the provider has selected a default increment of 10 minutes, an appointment might be scheduled at 8:20 or 8:30 but not 8:15. This default increment selection is made in the Edit Provider Section 2 screen. Appointments are allowed to overlap or be double booked ( or more ) without limit.

Provider Appointment Duration

Every provider has a default time duration (also specified in minutes) for the length of scheduled appointments. In order to keep the graphical interface in the various scheduler screens easy to understand, valid choices for the default duration are limited to multiples of the provider increment previously mentioned. For example: If the provider has selected a default increment of 10 minutes, the default duration might be 10, 20, 30... and so on but not 15 minutes. This default duration selection is also made in the Edit Provider Section 2 screen.

Color Coded Appointment Screens

All tables that list appointment times are color-coded to indicate the level of booking for any particular time. For example: If there are two appointments scheduled at 9:30, a double-booked color indicator will be drawn. This allows the user to, at a glance, determine the level of appointment bookings for any particular day or week. The colors that are used for single, double, and double++ booked are user selectable and are set in the Scheduler Preferences screen.

Blocks Of Time

The scheduler supports the scheduling of Blocks Of Time. These special times can be utilized for reserving times in the schedule for any particular purpose. Typical examples are to reserve future slots of time for new patients only or for certain types of visits such as physicals. Blocks Of Time are also an alternate method to indicate that a provider will not be available however they are limited to times during a single day. For provider reserved times that consistantly repeat (ex: lunch) or span multiple days (ex: conference), refer to the Reserved Times. Blocks of Time are scheduled exactly like appointments except without a patient. After they are created, patient appointments can be scheduled any time during the Block of Time.

Provider Office Hours

The Office Hours screen allows defining the hours that the office will be open. Hours can be defined once and then kept in effect for all dates or they may be selectively active for a certain time period. For example: Summer hours may be defined for June through August and non-summer hours can be defined for the rest of the year. As dates are selected throughout the various schedule screens, the hours that are defined for the current date are always used for the display.

Provider Reserved Times

The Reserved Times screen allows defining dates and times that the provider wishes to flag as unavailable. This may include a repeating lunch hour from 12 to 1 or a conference from Monday through Thursday. Similar to appointments, colors may be selected for every reserved time which makes the various screens and displays easy to understand. Like office hours, provider reserved days and times can be defined once and then kept in effect for all dates or they may be selectively active for a certain time period. For example: Lunch hours may be defined as 12 to 1 on Monday through Thursday and defined (or not defined) as 1 to 2 on Friday.

Getting Started

Before creating any appointments in TreFre Medical, you should:

• Modify and save the Scheduler Preferences for appointments.
• Edit each Provider that you wish to schedule time for. When editing, verify the "Enable Scheduling" checkbox is selected and the default increment and duration are set to your preferred time lengths.
• Set the Office Hours that each provider is available.
• Set the Reserved Times such as lunch that each provider is not available.