Managing Appointment Phases

Appointment phases are customizable statuses that organizations can use to track patients during the course of their treatment. Phases are assigned to the appointment and can be configured as a display field so that as you look at the schedule you can see where the patient is in their treatment. Simple examples might include

Patient checked in and waiting for a room
Patient ready to be prepped for surgery
Patient moved to ICU

Primarily designed as a support feature for inpatient treatment or home care environments, phases can be used by any organization that would like to assign some customizable status to an appointment.

Initial Configuration

Select Data Maintenance > Appointment Phases from the Main menu. The Edit Appointment Phases screen will appear.
Click Add at the bottom of the phase list panel. A new line item will appear.

Type the new Description.
Click Update. The screen will refresh with the change. Alternatively, click Cancel to revert the change.
Repeat as necessary until the all of the desired phases have been entered.
Use the Up and Down options to position the phases in their desired sequence.
Click Save to commit all of your changes. If you don't save your changes when you are done, or if you navigate away from the screen, they will be lost.

NOTE – End users will not even see the phase option on the grid unless at least one phase has been configured in your database.

Editing Phases

Complete step 1 from the previous section, and then click Edit in the appropriate line item to change the description of an existing phase. The Description will become an editable field.

Repeat steps 3–7 above.

Implementing Phases in the Organization

Modifying or creating phases to meet the workflow requirements of your organization is just one step in implementing phases. The following steps also need to be taken to ensure that the users who work with phases will be able to (a) assign them to appointments and (b) see the patient's current phase status.

In order to assign phases to an appointment, users must have the following security right set to Full: Appointment Operations > Change Appointment Status > Set Appointment Phase.

See the Security Profile Overview and Adding/Editing Security Profiles topics for related discussion.

The ability to view the phase assigned to an appointment is a two-step process in configuring appointment display fields.

First, Appointment: Phase needs to be added to the Assigned display fields in Data Maintenance > System and Security > Grid and Case.
Second, Appointment: Phase needs to be assigned in Preferences > Display Fields to each user who wants to view the phase status. Note that this includes any static user (i.e., a whiteboard monitor) through which patient schedules are monitored.

Phases are displayed in the Mobile application but cannot be managed there.

See also, the Grid Display Fields and Display Fields.