How appointments work

An appointment is one visit by one patient. It has a date and time, a type, a priority, and optionally a clinician, a duration and a room. As the visit happens, the appointment moves through a series of statuses.

The appointment details

Detail	Choices
Type	Consultation, Follow up, Emergency, Treatment
Priority	Low, Medium, High. High-priority appointments are flagged on the calendar and the Clinical Desk.
Clinician	The staff member carrying out the visit. Only staff with the Assignable to appointments permission can be picked. It can be left empty and assigned later.
Duration (minutes)	How long the visit takes. Optional. See automatic duration.
Room	A room number or name. Optional.

Statuses

Status	Meaning
Scheduled	Booked. Every new appointment starts here.
Confirmed	The visit is confirmed with the patient. The patient is sent a confirmation.
Checked in	The patient has arrived and is waiting.
In progress	The patient is with the clinician.
Awaiting checkout	The visit is over. The patient is at the front desk to finish up, for example to pay.
Completed	Everything is done.
Rescheduled	Moved to a new date and time.
Cancelled	Won’t happen.
No show	The patient didn’t come.

Completed, Cancelled and No show are final: the appointment can’t change status again.

Which status can come next

From	Can move to
Scheduled	Confirmed, Checked in, Cancelled, Rescheduled, No show
Confirmed	Checked in, Cancelled, Rescheduled, No show
Checked in	In progress, Cancelled, No show, Rescheduled
In progress	Awaiting checkout
Awaiting checkout	Completed, Cancelled, Rescheduled
Rescheduled	Confirmed, Cancelled, Rescheduled (again)

Every status change is recorded in the appointment’s Status history, with who made it and when.

What happens automatically

• Confirmed: the patient gets a confirmation email, if they have an email address and appointment confirmations are on. If the appointment had been Rescheduled, the message tells them the new date instead. Modules such as WhatsApp can send their own message too. The appointment then shows when the Confirmation was sent.
• Reminders: confirmed appointments get a reminder the day before and again on the day. The appointment shows when the Reminder was sent.
• Checked in: the assigned clinician gets a live Patient checked in notification, unless they checked the patient in themselves. Their Clinical Desk badge counts up.

Automatic duration

When Auto-populate appointment duration is on in General settings (it is unless your clinic turned it off), moving an appointment out of In progress fills in its duration with the minutes it actually spent In progress.

Who can do what

Permission	What it allows
Read appointments	See every appointment in the clinic: the Clinical Desk, All Appointments, the Calendar, and patients’ Appointments tabs.
Assignable to appointments	Be picked as an appointment’s clinician. On its own, it lets you see only your own appointments, and move your own appointments from Checked in to In progress and from In progress to Awaiting checkout.
Create appointments	Book appointments, walk-ins and follow-ups.
Update appointments	Change any appointment’s status (following the table above), edit its details and clinician, and reschedule it. Also add clinical information to Completed appointments.
Manage appointments	The same as Update appointments, except adding clinical information after an appointment is Completed.
Delete appointments	Delete appointments that aren’t Completed.

Editing an appointment’s details or clinician is only possible until it’s Completed, Cancelled or a No show.

Clinical information

Complications (from the Medical History module) can only be recorded on an appointment:

• while the appointment is Checked in, In progress or Awaiting checkout, for staff with Update or Manage appointments, and for the appointment’s own clinician, and
• after it’s Completed, only for staff with Update appointments.