In this issue ...

Welcome

Overview

Appointment Reasons

Appointment Resources

Appointment Status

Appointment History

Calendar Navigation

Blocking

Cancelled and Missed Reports

Scanning

As you may have already noticed, we have added some new features to Azalea Practice Management™. The new features include additions to the appointment scheduler as well as the ability to scan images into the system. Please review the updates below. For detailed information, other than what is provided, refer to the Help section in Azalea Practice Management™. Should you need additional training or have a specific question regarding any of these updates, please feel free to contact Ashley McGahee at 229-269-4660 or amcgahee@azaleahealth.com

• 1. Appointment Reasons - We now have the ability to pre-define appointment reasons. Each reason has a name, length of time, and color associated with it. Once you have defined your appointment reasons, they can be selected from a drop down menu when creating a new appointment.
• 2. Appointment Resources - Resources can be anything from a EKG Machine to an Operating Room. Resources will be viewed alongside Providers in the main Scheduler screen and will allow your practice to schedule appointments to that Resource directly.
• 3. Appointment Status - There is now a pre-defined list of appointment status' to be used to manage patient appointments as well as to track appointment history for a patient. Depending on the situation you will select the status for each appointment.
• 4. Appointment History - At the bottom of the patient demographics screen we have added an Appointment History section for each patient showing all previous and future appointments along with the status.
• 5. Calendar Navigation - Directly beneath the scheduler calendar we have added a feature where you may easily jump ahead to future months by clicking on the drop down menu next to Jump Ahead and selecting a future month.
• 6. Blocking - Both daily schedule blocking as well as lock-out blocking features have been added. These features enable you to block a daily schedule or lock-out specific dates and times for an individual Physician/Resource.
• 7. Cancelled and Missed Reports - Two additional "Report Types" have been added to the Billing Reports section in Practice Management™. You may now pull a report of all missed and cancelled appointments during a specified date range.
• 8. Scanning - Scan documents such as drivers license and insurance cards, and attach the images directly to patient demographics.

The ability to pre-define appointment reasons. Each reason has a name, length of time, and color associated with it. Once you have defined your appointment reasons, they can be selected from a drop down menu when creating a new appointment.

Examples: Examples: First Visit, 60 Minutes, Black; Follow Up, 30 Minutes, Blue

Resources can be anything from a EKG Machine to an Operating Room. Resources will be viewed alongside providers in the main scheduler screen and will allow your practice to schedule appointments to that resource directly.

Example: According to Dr X, John Doe needs an EKG performed within a week and a follow up visit in two weeks to discuss the results. In the appointment scheduler, John Doe will be given an appointment with the Resource "EKG" this week, and another appointment will be scheduled with Dr X for the following week.

There is now a pre-defined list of appointment status' to be used to manage patient appointments as well as to track appointment history for a patient. Depending on the situation, you will select the status for each appointment.

Examples: deleted, canceled, rescheduled, missed, arrived (with time arrived), etc.
Note: Each time an appointment status is selected for a particular patient's visit, that status will be linked to the patient's history. Should a scheduling mistake be made, always select "deleted" for the status in order to delete a patient from the scheduler. Selecting a "cancelled" or "missed" status will be incorrectly perceived as a cancellation or no-show in the patient's Appointment History.

At the bottom of the patient demographics screen we have added an Appointment History section for each patient displaying all previous and future appointments along with the status.

Example: Easily track how many times a patient has cancelled or missed an appointment. You may also review any upcoming appointments for a patient in this section as well. All of this information is viewed under the Appointment Summary section in the Patient Details screen.

Directly beneath the scheduler calendar we have added a feature where you may easily jump ahead to future months by clicking on the drop down menu next to Jump Ahead and selecting a future month.

Example: You may now easily view who is on the schedule for future dates when scheduling/rescheduling appointments. To easily return to today's date, click the Today button underneath.

The blocking feature has been added to block out specific dates and times for an individual Physician/Resource in the scheduler. This will keep your staff from scheduling a patient at a time when the provider/resource will not be available.

Two types of blocking:

(A)Daily Schedule Blocks: Blocking in which the physician may block a specific amount of time and label it with a specific appointment reason. Daily schedule blocks may also be set so that the physician may lock out certain times each day so scheduling can not happen over those specific hours. Daily schedule blocks will block accordingly for every single day.

Example: Between 9am and 10am the physician will only see new visit patients, between 10am and 12pm the physician will only see follow up patients, between 12pm and 1pm the schedule is locked out so no appointments can be made over lunch, and so on through out the rest of the day.

(B)Lock-Out Schedule Blocks: Lock out Blocking allows you to block out a predetermined time when the Provider/Resource will be unavailable all together. Lock-Out schedule blocks will block for only the specified date and time.

Example: Block off an entire day, couple days in a row, or just a couple hours on a specific date to ensure patients are not scheduled when the physician is out of the office.

Two additional "report types" have been added to the Billing Reports. You may now track all cancelled and missed appointments for a specified date range.

Example: You may wish to pull either/both the cancelled and missed report(s) at the end of each day/week/month and contact patients who have missed/cancelled appointments, and re-schedule them.

The ability to scan images such as a patient's drivers license, insurance cards, photos, or any other additional documentation you wish to attach to a patient's demographic record has been added.
Note: In order to utilize the scanning feature, you will need to have a scanner on site. Scanning of photos, drivers licenses, insurance cards and other patient documents can be done using any compatible TWAIN scanner. If you would like to purchase a card and or document scanner, please contact us.

Two types of scanning abilities:

(A)Scanning images in the Patient Images section of the Patient Details screen: Scanned documents may be added and viewed at bottom of the Patient Details screen under the section labeled Patient Images

(B)Scanning driver's license and insurance card images within the Add/Edit Patient screens: Only the patient's drivers license and/or insurance card images may scanned directly within the patient demographics themselves in the Add/Edit Patient screens.

Note: Within the Add/Edit Patient screen you have the ability to scan both the front and the back of driver's licenses and insurance cards.