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Administrative
Add and manage patients, manage appointments and manage transport.
Appointments
Use Communicare appointments to book future appointments and record services provided without an appointment, for example, walk-in patients.
Cancelling and rescheduling appointments manually
You can cancel or reschedule one or more patients' appointments in the Appointment Book at any time before the consultation starts.
Rescheduling appointments
If you cancelled appointments and queued the patients for rescheduling, you can reschedule the appointments.

Administrative
Add and manage patients, manage appointments and manage transport.
- Patients
  Communicare uses the term Patient to refer to the clients of a health service.
- Appointments
  Use Communicare appointments to book future appointments and record services provided without an appointment, for example, walk-in patients.
  - Working with the Appointment Book
    Use the Appointment Book to add sessions, book and change appointments, and check patient's in.
  - Appointment Details
    When booking an appointment, after you have selected a timeslot and the patient, the Appointment Details window is displayed.
  - Cancelling and rescheduling appointments manually
    You can cancel or reschedule one or more patients' appointments in the Appointment Book at any time before the consultation starts.
    - Rescheduling appointments
      If you cancelled appointments and queued the patients for rescheduling, you can reschedule the appointments.
  - Appointment timeslots
    A timeslot is the period in which an appointment is booked. Timeslots can be of any duration.
  - Appointment session
    An appointment session is the period of time for which a Provider and Facility are allocated to provide services. Sessions are normally divided into timeslots.
  - Appointment Session Status
    Session Status is used to indicate the condition of sessions and session templates.
  - Appointment Session Insertion
    The Session Templates List is displayed when you insert a session into the Appointment Book.
  - Patient Appointment and Service History
    From the Appointment Book or clinical record, use the Service List window to view a list of all upcoming appointments for a patient, and a patient's appointment and service history.
  - Walk-in patients
    Walk-in patients are those who arrive without an appointment. That is, they just walk in.
  - Simultaneous Check-In
    The Simultaneous Check-In window is displayed when checking in a patient who has more than one appointment today. It allows patients with multiple appointments to be efficiently managed through services with multiple providers.
  - Appointment Cancellation Reason
    Use the Appointment Cancellation Reason window to indicate a broad reason category for an appointment cancellation.
  - Online Appointment Booking
    Online appointment booking systems allow patients to find an available provider and appointment time slots 24 hours a day, without the need to interact with the health service to book an appointment.
  - Appointment Book report
    Use the Appointment Book report to print the appointments book in a format that can be used in an emergency as a paper appointments book. It is also useful when reviewing the setup of the appointments book.
  - SMS messages and reminders
    In Communicare V21.1 and later, you can send appointment reminders to patients using Telstra Health's SMS gateway (TH Messaging) and a new interface.
  - SMS messaging using Burst
    Set up SMS messaging so that your health service can send SMS messages to patients using Burst.
- Transport
  Communicare offers two ways of managing transport services.

Rescheduling appointments

If you cancelled appointments and queued the patients for rescheduling, you can reschedule the appointments.

Booking comments and requirements are copied from the original booking.

Appointments are listed in the reschedule queue until the original date and time of the appointment has passed. After that date and time, these appointments are still stored in the database but are not listed in the reschedule queue.

To display a list of appointments that were not rescheduled before the original date and time of the appointment has passed for follow up with patients who may still require an appointment:

As an administrator, select Reports > Appointments > Reschedule Queue Details.
Set a start date of any past date.

To reschedule appointments:

In the Appointment Book, select the next appropriate available appointment timeslot and click Reschedule, or right-click and select Reschedule From Queue.
In the Appointment Reschedule Queue window, select the patient who you want to add to this timeslot.
Details from the cancelled appointment are copied to the new appointment.
Click Select.
In the Appointment Details window, add any required details and click Save.

The appointment is booked with its original booking details and the cancelled appointment is removed from the reschedule queue.

Patients booked from the reschedule queue are no longer counted in the patient cancellation numbers. Those not rescheduled are included in the cancellation numbers with a reason of Queue for rescheduling.

14 November 2023