If you have ever had the problem of trying to manually navigate through the appointment book to find the next available appointment for a certain provider, or the next available appointment of a certain type, this article will point you in the right direction. Continue reading the article below to find out an easier way to save time by automating the search for available appointments.
Before you begin
When searching for available appointments it’s often a good idea to know if you are looking for the next available appointment for a certain provider regardless of type, or if there is a specific type of appointment slot you would like to find across multiple providers.
Next available appointment by provider
To find the next available appointment slot for a certain provider, at the top of the appointment book you can click the Next… drop down menu and select the provider in question from the list.
You should notice the next available appointment slot will be highlighted in that provider’s page in the appointment book.
If you would like to find the next available appointment after that and so on, you can click the Find Again button at the top of the appointment book to be shown the next available appointment.
To find the next available appointment for any provider in your database, you can select the All option from the drop-down menu to change to the All Provider view, where the appointment will be highlighted in that provider’s column.
Next available appointment by type
If you would like to find the next available appointment of a certain type, you can use the same Next… drop-down menu at the top of the appointment book and click the type of appointment in the list that appears below the provider’s names.
This will work with types selected for appointments and will also work for types selected for schedules that are present underneath your appointments.
In addition to the above searches, you have the option of searching for appointments of a specific length. This can be done by Alt-clicking on the type in the Next… drop-down menu you would like to search for to bring up the following prompt:
In this window, you can enter the length of the appointment you are looking for in minutes to find the next appointment of that type that lasts that length of time (e.g. a 30-minute Follow-up appointment).
By Shift-clicking on the Find Again button, you will be presented with the Future Empty window seen below:
This will allow you to find all available appointment type slots in a selected time period and allows you to book the patient in from the same window.