In MacPractice Gen 12, we have expanded the functionality of the Patient Selector. This article will explain the changes made, and the added functionality included here.
Changes to the Patient Selector
When you click the Patient Selector, the Patient Selector window appears and you'll note that there are two additional tabs: "Appointments", and "Recent".
Appointments Tab
The purpose behind the Appointments Tab is to facilitate the workflow of billers or office managers who work in the ledger who need an easy way to select patients with appointments scheduled that day without leaving their current ability.
The Appointments Tab will allow you to review the given appointments for a selected day. Appointments for all resources will be pulled into the results, but you can adjust this in the new Patient Selector Preference Category. By default, the date will be set to today's current date and today's appointments will appear. You can toggle days by clicking the left and right arrow buttons, return to today by clicking the Today button, and you can manually enter a specific date if you desire.
Appointments with a Status of Missed, Cancelled, or To Reschedule will not be included in the Appointments Tab.
You can also filter by Providers in the upper right hand corner. This will default to All Providers, but you can hone down to a specific provider. You can also select "None" to capture those Appointments without a provider selected.
If the day is changed, the current MacPractice user session will recall the selected day until the user logs out and back in, in which case it will return to the default date of today.
The table displays all patients with an appointment on the date selected. Columns indicate the detail of the appointment in question. You can sort the table results by clicking on any column header. Double clicking a patient will select that patient.
These are the columns, In order:
Time (Duration): The starting time and length of the appointment.
Patient Name: The patient this appointment is scheduled for.
Resource: Which resource (column in the Schedule Ability) the appointment was scheduled in.
Type: The Appointment Type of the appointment in question.
Status: The Appointment Status of the appointment in question.
The Recent Tab
The Recent Tab contains the last ten patients that have been previously selected. This is useful in case you need to switch back and forth between patients but don't want to enter their search details each time.
New Preference Category - Patient Selector
With the addition of the Patient Selector changes, we've also included a new Patient Selector Preference category. You can access this by navigating to the MacPractice Menu > Preferences > Patient Selector in the sidebar of the Preferences window.
These preferences are tied to the User logged into MacPractice. Each User can configure this set of preferences to their liking.
In the Patient Selector Preferences, you can toggle which Resources can be pulled into the Patient Selector's Appointment Tab. If you don't want a particular resource's appointments to be represented there, you can uncheck that resource in the table to prevent it from populating when reviewing the Appointments Tab.
There is also a new behavioral preference that you can toggle, "When Logging In and Opening New Windows". This will adjust whether the currently selected patient will also be selected if you open a new window via the MacPractice menu.