Therapist Schedule

The  provider's schedule in PMA is designed for use by the front desk for locating available appointments for one of the providers. The schedule can be independent of the billing process.

You can switch between the day view which shows the schedule for all providers for the selected day and the week view which shows the schedule for a week for the selected provider.

When the Schedule screen first comes up, it shows the day view with the names of all the providers in the Provider's table.

You can use this schedule for scheduling any activity, just write in the name of the activity in the selected hour.

There are several ways to schedule a patient. You can go to the selected period in the selected provider column and press a function key. This will bring up the Scheduling Details screen where you can select the patient and other details of the schedule.

You can also simply type in the patient information on the Provider's Schedule screen. We suggest the following format: name (account number) phone (Proc=x) (Time=x). Example: Carol A Little (T01-C-261) H509-292-0500 (Proc=90806AH) (Time=20)

When making an entry on the Provider's Schedule screen, click on the selected hour (row) in the provider column, type the name or activity and then press the Enter key to record the entry. Remember to press the Enter key so that your data gets stored. Doing so will cause a note to be displayed on the bottom of the screen verifying your data has been stored.

You can also have the program help you enter the patient's name if the patient is in the main database already. Just enter first few letters of the patient's last name and then press a key obtain a list of patients whose name begins with the letters that you typed in. Remember that the names are case sensitive. You can also enter just the patient's account number if you know it and then press a key to have the patient's name and account number entered for you.

You can post a charge for the current patient by pressing a key. For this to work, it requires the patient's account number and the procedure code used to be shown on the schedule. This should be in the format xx (yy) (Proc=zz) where xx is the patient's name, yy is the patient's account number and zz is the procedure code used. This format can be automatically in place by selecting the proper options on the Options tab. After posting the charge, the program will capitalize the word 'PROC=' to indicate that this procedure has been charged.

To find a patient in the Provider's Schedule database, press a key and enter part or all of the patient's name (case sensitive) to see the schedule for this patient. Right click on the screen to return to the regular schedule.

If you need to schedule recurring appointments for the patient or activity, select the patient or activity by double clicking on the name, or by a key when the patient has been selected, to bring up the Recurring Appointments screen. Here you can schedule appointments daily, weekly, every other week, monthly or every other month for a certain number of times and/or until a certain date.

Note: If you double click on a column in the Day View that is blank because the provider has no one scheduled that day, the column will be removed from the grid. This is handy if you want to print the Day View without this blank column.

You can set the days and hours that the selected provider is not available for appointments, such as weekends, days off, holidays and vacations by pressing Ctrl-U to go to the Days and Hours Off screen. There you can set any hour of the day, any day of the week to be unavailable for appointments.

You can set days off also, including vacations, for each provider. Just be sure the date ranges entered are during the current year.

Note that unavailable hours are marked with *** N/A *** for Not Available. You can change this mark to be whatever you like by selecting Options on the menu bar.

You can make any normally unavailable hour open for an appointment merely by erasing the code or wording that indicates it is not available. Remember to press the Enter key after doing so. The program will place a code or wording to indicate that this hour is now open for an appointment. You can change the code or wording used for this by selecting Options on the menu bar.

You can also load all the previous scheduled entries from the Billing table by selecting Options on the menu bar. The program will load them sequentially in a day if no time has been previously given.

The program defaults to a patient interval of 60 minutes (one patient session per hour). You can change that to a different interval, between 1 and 60 minutes, by clicking on Options and then on the line that says Minutes Per Patient and entering a new value.