Benefits of Appointment Search

• Appointment Search works intuitively with the way that Receptionists conversationally book appointments with patients.
• It starts sensibly with identifying the most convenient session (morning, afternoon, evening or night) on a particular day.
• The search is fast and intuitive - in a best-case scenario a Receptionist can book the best appointment gap for the patient in just 3 clicks: select Session > select Time > Book the appointment.
• The Appointment Search is particularly beneficial for practices with complex appointment books, especially those with clinics, blocks and rooms used by more than one provider type (e.g. Dentist and Hygienist).
• In practices with multiple Locations, practitioners can optionally search across the Locations for any appointment that suits a patient.
  • This includes searching by Provider or by Room:

    

  • Practitioners can also search for a single Provider across multiple Locations.

    This applies where Providers may for example work some days of the week in one location and on other days work in a second location.

    It can also apply where Providers work in clinics across multiple floors of a building, where each floor is configured as a Location.

• The returned results clearly differentiate optimum appointment gaps (adjacent to other items in the book, so there is no chance the that the appointment will be located in the middle of a large gap) and standard gaps (that may have gaps on either side). Appointment Search users can try to book patients for the optimum gaps, but then fall back on standard gaps if necessary:

  

• The Appointment Search Window is a mini console that overlays the appointment book while allowing the appointment book to be fully visible through the booking procedure.
• Using Appointment Search, a Receptionist is more likely to find and fill appointment book gaps compared with booking by hand.
  • For example:
    A Receptionist booking on average four weeks out by hand is likely to click the +4W button to go directly to the part of the book where gaps appear, skipping the intervening days.
    But the Appointment Search might offer up a gap that has just appeared early next week due to another patient's cancellation.
• The upgraded search algorithm is available by default in EXACT, requiring no module purchase, activation, or configuration.
• The algorithm processes searches faster than previous versions, and automatically takes into account patient preferences.
• Providers can be rostered in a single Room so long as they are of different types (Dentist plus Hygienist).