This manual describes the version of sam that PCC released in 2004. If you have ever used the previous version of Partner's scheduler, you will benefit from these changes in the new version of sam:
In the old version of sam, you were shown no more than five open times. You could not easily review the schedule around those openings. New sam offers a calendar of times. You can now see more openings and review currently scheduled appointments as if you were viewing a souped up traditional appointment book.
Instead of memorizing key commands (like "c" to confirm, or "i" for inquire), all the scheduling options you need are displayed as function keys on the screen. For example, in old sam the "s" command would spread out a single day. It is replaced with [F5 -- Select This Day].
When you run new sam, it asks for a patient immediately. If you run the scheduler from within another program (like pen), you will automatically see your current patient. Otherwise, you will pick a patient as soon as you launch sam.
New sam displays a detailed patient information page after you find the patient. This information remains on the screen as you enter the visit type, provider, and time frame. You can customize what information appears for your office.
New sam sports many other improvements to the interface:
The visit reason, provider, and location are now pull down menus that you can access with the asterisk (*).
You can override a visit length on the fly, allowing you to easily schedule more time for patients with special needs.
If you make your Partner window larger, sam will expand to show you more available appointments.
Besides viewing available time in the normal grid view, new sam has two extra screens to help you find and manage available time for your provider(s). There is a Detailed View for the day you are considering, and a Day View which can show you how busy each provider is and allows you to switch among providers and locations while scheduling. If you used the "v" for viewing scan while you were scheduling, that function is replaced with the Detailed View. If you used the "m" for "makeappt", the Day View will let you schedule an appointment on any day for any time.
Those are the major changes in the new scheduler. Read the rest of this manual to learn more about these and other exciting new features.