Appointments
- Videos
- Create an appointment
- Drag and drop
- How to bill for a no-show, missed, or late-cancel appointment
- Changing or deleting a past appointment
- Color-code appointments
- 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. First is from the left-hand menu by clicking on + New Appointment.
Second, you can create a new appointment from the Calendar view by clicking and dragging over the time slot you wish to schedule your appointment.
Both methods will present you with the New Appointment modal.
Below is a description of each field (Fields in Bold are required):
- What type of event is this? -
- Client Session - This is for scheduling a new appointment with your Client.
- Client Contact - Client contact can be any interaction with your Client (phone, in-person, email, etc.) that you would like to keep a record, add notes to, or charge or service.
- Collateral Contact - A collateral contact is a source of information that is knowledgeable about the Client's situation and serves to support or corroborate information provided by a client. Communication with collateral contacts includes contact by phone, in-person, email, etc.
- 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.
- Practitioner - If your practice has multiple practitioners, select the practitioner that the Client contact will be with.
- Contact With - This option appears when the appointment type is "Collateral Contact." This is the person the contact was with; some examples include parent/guardian, spouse, family member, psychologist, caseworker, physician, etc.
- Medium - This option appears when the appointment type is "Collateral Contact" or "Client Contact." It is for recording how the contact was made; phone, in-person, email, etc.
- Location - This option appears when the appointment type is "Client Session." A record at which pre-configured location the session took place
- Date and Recurrence - 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. You can choose if this is a one-time appointment or a recurring appointment; there are multiple default options of recurrence, every week, every other week, etc. You may also set a custom weekly recurring appointment.
Note: When you're adding a new appointment, the appointment time you assign is in the local time zone where you are currently located. For example, If you're in Spain/Madrid time zone and wanting to add an appointment for 12pm Central US Time, you'd want to use 7pm as the appointment time (since you're in GMT+2 and not in GMT-5).
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- More Information - Any other information you would like to record with this session or contact.
Note: Appointment reminders can be configured to display the information in this field.Be aware that any information in this field will be seen by clients if configured to include the More Information field in appointment reminders.
Click "Save," and the session or contact will be created.
Setting the billable service
You can add a Billable Service to an appointment during creation or by editing the appointment later. Select the Services dropdown, it will be populated with the billable services you have setup for your practice. You may change the services available in the dropdown from Billing Settings > Services.
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.
Groups
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.
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
How to bill for a no-show, missed, or late-cancel appointment
First, make sure you've enable no-show fees in your account by going to Billing Settings > Setting.
Next, Click Edit and set the no-show fee amount and the type of cancellation. You can always override the fee amount when cancelling the appointment.
To cancel an appointment, click the cancel icon on the appointment.
You can then choose the type of cancellation and complete the cancellation options.
Note: To reverse a cancelled appointment, go to the Notes section of the appointment and click Unlock.
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.
Color-code appointments
There are two methods for color-coding appointments. You may color-code any appointment or calendar event on the appointment itself. You may also color-code appointments by type of service.
Option #1
From the calendar, at the time of event creation, you may assign any custom color to that event. On the Add Event modal, you may select the color you wish to use to display the event on the calendar. Click the colored-circle by the repeat options to select the color. If you select a recurring appointment, the color will persist through future appointments.
Option #2
Go to Billing Settings > Services.
Click the '...' menu for any service to edit. From there, you may set any service code to be displayed with one of many color options. Click the colored-circle to select a color from the color options. The selected color will be the default color for new appointments using that service.
Note: A color set in the appointment described in option #1 above will override the color set for the service type.
Note: Any changes from the service code settings will only get applied to new appointments going forward.
Your calendar will now display the color-coded appointments.
Color-coding meetings and other work events
You may also make a custom service called meetings, or work-event, etc. You may then give this code a custom color different from your other CPT codes so that it is easy to distinguish client sessions from work appointments.
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.
Can you explain how Telehealth integration works?
With the emergence of services such as Doxy.me and other more economical HIPAA-compliant telehealth services, we've decided at this time not to focus our efforts on re-inventing that wheel by building our own solution. However, what we provide towards telehealth are:
- You can embed your telehealth link in appointment reminders, the appointment accessed through the portal, or through Secure Message. We make it easy for you to setup telehealth for all your clients without having to manually send a link each time.
- Guidance on how to set up your sessions with the appropriate telehealth Location Codes for insurance if you plan to generate 1500 claims (electronically-submitted claims are on our roadmap and plan to have that available around mid-2022).
Do I need to schedule my appointment in 30-minute increments?
There's no limitation to the times you can schedule an appointment. When setting the start or end time, even though we auto-complete with 30-minute increments, you can free-form the time value to any valid time (ex. 3:22pm):
