Patient Portal Self Scheduling
Contents
Self Scheduling in Patient Portal
Streamline your scheduling and reduce appointment requests with Patient Portal Scheduling. Your patients and families can now schedule themselves through the Patient Portal with just a few clicks.
Configure Portal Scheduling: Portal Scheduling requires configuration before using. To learn how to enable, configure, and manage Portal Scheduling, jump to Configure Self Scheduling in Patient Portal on this page. Download a self-scheduling setup checklist here.
When enabled, portal users will find a “Schedule Appointment” button on the patient portal home page.
Portal users will select a patient and visit category to schedule. All portal scheduling visits are categorized into either sick or well visit category.
Patients with privacy enabled or who have a status flag that prevents scheduling will be unselectable and marked with “Please Call to Schedule”.
The portal user will select a visit reason, provider, and location, then click “Find Appointments”
The portal will offer all available appointments that match the visit category, provider, and location.
When searching for a sick appointment, portal scheduling shows all open time slots beginning one hour in the future through three days in the future.
When searching for a well appointment, if the patient has a next physical due date listed in their chart, the appointments offered will begin on that date. A patient without a physical due date will be offered time slots for the next day through the following three months.
When the portal user selects an appointment they’ll have an opportunity to review their selections and schedule the appointment.
Finally, after scheduling, the portal user can add an appointment note.
The appointment immediately appears in the Appointment Book and on PCC EHR’s Schedule queue, where it can be reviewed, rescheduled and managed just like any other appointment.
Portal scheduled appointments are marked with a stripe pattern in the Appointment Book and in PCC EHR’s Schedule queue.
Report Appointments by Scheduling User
Your practice can review appointments created through Portal Self Scheduling with the new Appointments by Scheduling User report in the Appointment category. This report collects appointments with an Appointment Creation Date of “yesterday” by default. Appointments made through patient portal Self Scheduling are grouped together as scheduled by “Portal User”.
Configure Self Scheduling in Patient Portal
Patient Portal Scheduling configuration options are available immediately upon updating to PCC 10.2. Your practice can complete configuration of Portal Scheduling then make it available to your patients and families.
Portal Scheduling Prerequisites:
Self scheduling uses PCC EHR’s Visit Types feature to link patient portal scheduling to Appointment Book. If your practice has not set up visit types, configure visit types before continuing.
If your practice uses Care Centers, Portal Scheduling will only show provider and locations that match the Care Center assigned to the patient being scheduled. As you configure Portal Scheduling, ensure that at least one provider and location is selected for each Care Center.
Configure Visit Reasons for Portal Self Scheduling
Configure the visit reasons, providers, and locations that portal users can select during portal scheduling.
Open the Visit Reason Tool
Open the Visit Reason tool in PCC EHR’s Configuration menu, and select the Portal Scheduling tab.
To allow patients and families to schedule sick visits, check the “Display for Portal Scheduling” box under “Category: Sick”.
Select Sick Category Visit Reasons
Click “Edit” next on the Visit Reasons line.
Visit reasons you select here will be available for scheduling through the patient portal.
Portal Scheduling only searches for open sick visit time-slots one hour in the future through the next three days. Appointment types that may need to be scheduled more than three days in the future should not be added to the Sick category.
When you’ve made your selection, click “Save”.
Select Sick Category Providers
Click the “Edit” button on the Providers line to select providers for the Sick category.
Select the providers that handle the visit reasons you selected above. You may wish to exclude providers that are placeholders for scheduling, such as an “Office” or “Flu” provider, or specialists who you would prefer to schedule over the phone.
Click “Save”.
Select Sick Category Locations
Click the “Edit” button on the Locations line to select providers for the Sick category.
As with Visit Reasons and Providers, select which locations should be available for portal scheduling. If you have locations that have odd hours or need more attention when scheduling, such as a pop-up flu clinic, you may wish to uncheck those.
Click “Save”
Do the Same for the Well Category
Complete the same steps for the Well category. Give the same consideration to well visit reasons, providers and locations.
When selecting well visit reasons, keep in mind that the Well visit category searches for available appointments one day in the future through the next three months. If the patient has a next physical due date in their chart, portal scheduling will jump to that date to begin searching for a matching appointment slot. You may find it best to add only physical exam visits to the Well category.
Click “Save” in each section as you go.
Configure Portal Scheduling Preferences
Use the Preferences tab in the Visit Reasons Configuration tool to determine what available, matching appointment time slots Portal Scheduling offers to your portal users.
The first option “Portal schedulers are only offered slots designated with a Portal Visit Type” allows your practice to designate specific time slots in a provider’s Scheduling Template as available to Patient Portal Scheduling. This does not prevent Appointment Book users from scheduling within those slots, it simply opens the selected time slots to the Portal Scheduling tool.
The second option “Portal schedulers are offered all slots matching the color of the Visit Reason” maximizes the available slots. Any open time slot color coded as a sick visit or a well visit is available to Portal Schedulers, provided they match the visit types, providers and locations you specified in the Portal Scheduling tab. With this option, no other configuration is needed. Just enable patient portal scheduling in Patient Portal Configuration, and you portal users can begin scheduling themselves.
Update Your Scheduling Templates for Portal Scheduling
Select “Portal schedulers are only offered slots designated with a Portal Visit Type” if your practice wants to limit portal scheduling to certain time slots.
Open the Provider Hours tool from PCC EHR’s Tools menu. Click the Scheduling Templates tab.
The Visit Type menu includes Portal Sick and Portal Well. Mark time slots as Portal Sick or Portal Well just as you do when setting up scheduling templates.
Time slots marked as Portal Sick or Portal Well will appear with a striped pattern over the color you selected for sick or well visits in your schedule.
Portal Sick and Portal Well function the same as the Sick and Well visit types, it only indicates that those time slots slots are available to the Portal Scheduling tool. This has no effect on scheduling through Appointment Book.
Review Your Visit Reasons
The Visit Reasons tab indicates a Portal Scheduling column, which displays the category of each visit reason: Sick, Well or not enabled.
Click “Edit” to open any visit reason, and manage that visit reason’s Portal Scheduling options. You can set an alternative Portal Display Name to appear in the patient portal instead of the Visit Reason name.. You can also change the Portal Scheduling Category for the visit using the drop-down menu.
Enable Portal Scheduling
Finally, open Patient Portal Configuration from PCC EHR’s Tools menu, and check “Enable Portal Scheduling for categories set to Display”. With that box checked, Portal Self Scheduling is available to all your patient portal users.
