2. Run inquire and View a Patient's Appointments
There are three ways to inquire about a patient's appointments:
If you are using sam, you can run inquire by pressing [F2 -- Inquire] from the Search Criteria screen.
You can tell the scheduler to inquire automatically whenever you find a patient for scheduling. To turn on the automatic inquire feature, refer to the Scheduler section of the Configuration Editor (ced) or contact PCC.
Finally, inquire can be run as a stand-alone program. PCC can add the inquire command to your Partner windows. If you are at a UNIX prompt, type inquire and press Enter. The program will ask you to select a patient.
When inquire runs, you will see a list of the chosen patient's appointments, with information about each one:
For each appointment, you can see the date, time, day, provider, location, visit reason, length of visit, and appointment "Status."
You can select specific appointments by using the arrow keys to go up and down the list. The "Notes" box at the bottom of the screen displays the visit notes of the currently selected appointment. If the patient has more appointments than can fit on the screen, the page up and page down keys allow access to the full list.
While most of the appointment information is self-explanatory, the Status column may contain varied information:
| Status | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Enc Needed | The appointment has been scheduled, but the encounter form has not been printed yet. |
| Enc: word | You have printed the encounter form, and "word" is the magic word. |
| Enc: | You have printed the encounter form, but so many days have passed since printing that the word has expired and been reused. You may have posted the charges without using the magic word. |
| Checked In | Someone has used the checkin program to confirm the patient's information. The patient is probably in the building. |
| Chg Posted | Someone has posted the charges for the encounter form by using the magic word in chuck. |
| Visit Reviewed | This is a visit that has been reviewed in Partner. PCC is preparing its databases for new charge posting confirmation features. For now, this status is identical to "Chg Posted." |
| Cancelled | This visit was cancelled using the inquire program. |
| Deleted | This visit was deleted using the inquire program. |
| Missed | This visit was marked as missed using the inquire program or the magic program. |
| Can/Del/Miss | This visit was "removed" with an old version of the inquire program that did not record how the appointment was removed. It was either marked as cancelled, deleted, or missed. |