Appointments
- Videos
- Create an appointment
- Changing or deleting a past appointment
- Drag and drop
- Frequently asked questions
Videos
These Sessions Health tutorials teach you how to use the calendar and schedule appointments.
Create an appointment for a client
Booking an appointment with a Client can be initiated from multiple spots. The first method is initiated from the left-hand menu by clicking on + New Appointment.
The second method can be initiated from the Calendar view by clicking on the time slot where you wish to schedule your appointment.
Both methods will present you with the New Appointment popup.
There are three types of appointments that can be made.
Client Session - This is for scheduling a new appointment with your Client.
Client Contact - Client contact is intended to be used to log any interactions with your Client (phone, in-person, email, etc.).
Collateral Contact - A collateral contact is am appointment with someone that is knowledgeable about the Client's situation and serves to support or corroborate information provided by a client. This type of event is intended to log communication with collateral contacts including contact by phone, in-person, email, etc.
Client Session
Client Sessions have the following fields (fields in Bold are required):
Client - Select the Client that you are creating this appointment/contact for. If the Client record does not exist yet, you create the first record from this modal with just the contact's name.
Services - This dropdown menu will populate with the billable services you have configured, you will need to select a billable service so you can create a bill for this event. Be sure to enter a service and a billable amount in order for a client session to be eligible for claims and superbills. You may change the services available in the dropdown from Billing Settings > Services.
Modifiers - You may enter any modifiers for the primary service. If your location is type 02 - Telehealth or 10 - Telehealth Provided in Patient’s Home, the 95 modifier is automatically added for you.
Practitioner - If your practice has multiple practitioners, select the practitioner that the Client contact will be with.
Location - This option appears when the appointment type is "Client Session." A record at which pre-configured location the session took place
Room - The ability to select a room (when rooms have been set up).
Date - If you used the Calendar drag method to create the appointment, this would be pre-filled with the time you selected, if not select the date and time of the session or contact.
Note: When you're adding a new appointment, the appointment time you assign by default is in the calendar's selected time zone (local time zone by default). However, the appointment time you assign can also be associated with a specific time zone by using the time zone drop down on the appointment popup.
URL - If this is a telehealth appointment, this can be used to include the URL for the appointment. See the telehealth article for details.
Additional Instructions - Any other helpful instructions to include.
Appointment Reminders - this allows you to configure whether you'd like to send automated email, phone, or text reminders to the client's email address or phone number on record. These settings are only available if the client's settings have been configured to allow email or phone reminders. You may set up to two reminders to be sent from 1 to 5 days in advance.
Session Bridge - This is a mechanism for collecting client feedback.
Note: For scheduling groups, please add each individual to the same time slot. You may see a warning that someone is already scheduled at that time. Feel free to ignore the warning so that you may include all members of the group at that time.
Recurring Appointments
You can choose if an appointment is a one-time appointment or a recurring appointment; there are multiple default options of recurrence, every week, every other week, etc.
You can also set a custom weekly recurring schedule. By selecting the Custom... option, you can provide custom recurrence and also set an end date for the repeating appointment.
Editing a recurring appointment
When editing a recurring appointment, you will be prompted whether or not you are just changing the time for the event selected, or for all future appointments. Selecting this event will only make changes to the current appointment. Selecting this and all future events will change the times for all appointments scheduled in the future as well.
Deleting a recurring appointment
To delete a recurring appointment, select the next scheduled appointment and click the Trash can icon. You will be prompted to delete this event or this and all future events. Select this and all future events to remove the future appointments. You can also edit the custom recurrence options to change the end date.
Client Contact
The client contact type of appointment includes most of the same fields as a Client Session. However it also includes:
Medium - It is for recording how the contact was made; phone, in-person, email, etc.
Collateral Contact
Collateral contact type is similar to the client contact type, but it also includes:
Contact With - This is the person the contact was with; some examples include parent/guardian, spouse, family member, psychologist, caseworker, physician, etc.
Other Events
Other event types can be created for appointments that don't involve clients. These can include work meetings, doctor appointments, etc. There is the option to set Other Event types as Busy or Free. If the appointment is set to Busy, then clients cannot schedule during that time. Events set to Free can still be booked by clients using Online Booking. Whether an event is Busy or Free will also be synced with Google calendar if two-way sync with Google is enabled.
Changing or deleting a past appointment
On occasion, you may need to change information such as the date/time, service, or diagnosis of a past appointment, or delete an appointment entirely. The process to change or delete an appointment depends on if you've already generated a bill and if you've already collected payment.
Scenario 1: You haven't generated a bill
If you haven't generated a bill, you can simply edit the appointment from the edit icon in the appointment.
If you've already signed your note, you'll need to first unlock the note before editing the appointment. To do this, go to the Notes tab and click Unlock where you signed your note.
Now you may change your diagnosis, edit services (including adding a modifier), change the location, change the date/time, or delete the session altogether by clicking the trash icon in the upper right corner.
Scenario 2: You generated a bill but haven't collected payment
If you've created your bill but haven't collected payment, you may edit the services for the bill by clicking on "..." next to the service in your bill.
You may also edit the diagnosis by going to the Notes section of the session and clicking Edit next to the diagnosis. You will need to first unlock the note if you've already signed it.
If you'd like to delete the appointment, you'll first need to cancel the bill by clicking "..." within the bill and select Cancel. Then, you can click the trash icon within the appointment to delete it. If you have a payment applied to a bill, you'll need to refund or remove the payment before cancelling the bill.
Drag and drop
You may drag and drop appointments on the calendar to change the date and time. To do this, click an appointment and hold down on the mouse button while dragging the appointment to the date and time on the calendar you would like to change it to.
Note: Pending appointment requests and reminders are not able to be dragged/dropped
FAQ
No show fees are different if it's an individual client versus a couples therapy session, is there a way to set different No show fees?
The no-show fees are generally set practice-wide. However, when there is a cancellation, you can override the default fee if you want certain clients to have a different fee.
Do I need to schedule my appointment in 15-minute increments?
There's no limitation to the times you use when scheduling an appointment. When settings the start or end time, even though we show 15-minute increments, you can enter any valid time.