Using PiMS Resource Schedul­ing, you can coordinate scheduling between patients, doctors, and resources such as technicians, rooms and equipment. Resource scheduling is designed to check when all resources of the order and the patient are available to find the first available appointment date and time. It is composed of the following scheduling concepts - scheduling groups, locations, order profiles, resources and components, appointment types, and schedules and calendars.

Appointment and Appointment Types

By scheduling an appointment, PiMS Scheduling coordinates the availability of the patient, doctor, and clinic resources to find a convenient time.

The appointment time is the time scheduled for the first appointment component.

There are two types of appointment slots that you can book depending on the availability of the order profile’s components:

• Normal Slots  You book normal appointment slots when the order profile’s components are available at a time convenient for the patient.
• Overbook Slots* You can book overbook appointment slots for some order profiles if no conve­nient normal slots are available. A specific number of overbook slots are set up for some order profiles in addition to the normal slots.

This way, you can use resources efficiently in spite of no-shows and last minute cancellations.

If no convenient normal or overbook slots are available, you may be able to force book the appointment. Force booking schedules the appointment outside the calendar availability. You must have appropriate authority to force book appointments.

Schedules and Calendars

For each component, a calendar is provided in the profile tables. A calendar is defined as the days and times the resource is available. The calendar contains the compo­nent’s owner and scheduling information, such as the appointment slots normally available and each slot’s duration.

The calendar keeps track of a component’s available and unavailable appointment slots for a particu­lar time period. The component’s schedule is a list of pending appointments for that component.

Appointment Scheduling Overview

When you schedule an appointment for a patient, you select an order. The order’s components specify the resources needed for the appointment. PiMS Scheduling then searches for an appointment slot when all the components are available.

Search options are available to further narrow the search for an available time. A specific date range, time range, day or week, location, or a combination of all options can be used.

If that appointment is not convenient for the patient, the additional appointments option displays the next ten appointments, along with page forward capability until an appropriate appointment is found.

If an order is allowed to be modified, the scheduler with security clearance can change the resource, remove a resource, or force book a resource. For example, the scheduler can change the physician to another physician if one is unavailable.

The appointment purpose, scheduling comments, itinerary notes, and referring physician can be entered when the appointment is scheduled. Also indicators for walk-in and chart requests can be entered if needed.

Force Booking

If you have the correct security access, you can force book an appointment if no appointments are available at the date and time that the patient needs. Components can be set up to all force booking, to disallow force bookings, or to require a password for force bookings *.

Immediate Booking

You can use the immediate book function to schedule an appointment when you want to schedule a specific appointment date and time and do not require the system to select the order availability for the patient.

Recurring Appointment *

You can select a series of appointments to schedule appointments that require repeated visits. You can define the frequency such as weekly, a unit of measure such as hourly, and the interval and the time span between appointments.