appointment book

[footquest]

alpha 5 ver 5. I need an appointment book that works with alpha 5..... I have a dr's office.

thanks Alan meyerberg
[email protected]

[Peter.Greulich]

Re: appointment book

Hhhmmm....

I guess if you are looking to buy one, there are users here who could sell you such a thing. In general, though, people buy Alpha to develop their own applications. If you're lucky, someone will have something suitable that you can buy "off the shelf", otherwise there are developers who could build it for you for a fee (but probably not for free:))

Good luck!

[Peter.Greulich]

Re: appointment book

That raises an interesting question: why not but a scheduling program for $70 or so? There are even plenty of pretty good shareware products even cheaper.

[drgarytraub]

Re: appointment book

Peter,

I have thought of that. But have you got a way to integrate it within a database?

Gary

[Peter.Greulich]

Re: appointment book

Gary, I think Goldmine uses dbf files, although i'm not sure if they are dbase III or not. Maybe someone else can tell you that.

[Peter.Greulich]

Re: appointment book

Gary, I was suggesting that footquest might want to use an off the shelf scheduling program instead of A5.

[Finian Lennon]

Re: appointment book

I'd hate to think that the literally thousands of hours I've spent on "perfecting" our appointment scheduler resulted in a product that could be replaced by something that cost $70 off-the shelf! That's a depressing thought.

I suppose the key difference is that an external application is very limited in how well it can integrate with an A5 app where ours has deep links between patient management and scheduling.

Even with its browse issues it is possible to build a high-functioning, robust, medical practice appointment scheduler with A5. I must say that when I read all the talk about browse rebuilds, my greatest fear is that we will end up with a more full-featured browse that crawls instead of the lightning fast browses we have now.

[Peter.Greulich]

Re: appointment book

I'd hate to think that the literally thousands of hours I've spent on "perfecting" our appointment scheduler resulted in a product that could be replaced by something that cost $70 off-the shelf! That's a depressing thought.

Hi Finian!

Anything that you spent working on for thousands of hours is worth it's weight in gold! Or maybe it's worth a thousand dollars an hour? :)

But I was just responding to the gentleman's question, which suggested that he was not going to spend thousands of hours himself. So unless, you or someone, is going to sell him such an application, he might just want to but a generic shareware program or other off-the-shelf product.

BTW: We'd love to see some more info on your application, Mr. Fin. I know I would be impressed!

[Finian Lennon]

Re: appointment book

Hi Peter:

I understood your suggestion and it was a fair response.

Of course those hours stretch over quite a few years. A scheduler is something that has to be, I think, hand coded in its entirety so it will always represent a major undertaking. Over the past couple of years that effort has gone into making the scheduler be more and more customizable by the end users and I still have a way to go on that.

It's used by oral surgeons in practices that range from small to very large with multiple providers and multiple locations. The practice can select 10,15,20 or 30 minutes per time slot and can choose to use from 1 to 4 columns per provider or location for a single screen view. The three column view shown is probably the most widely used. (They could choose more and can view all columns at any time but that obviously entails scrolling horizontally.) The views, headings, fonts are all user customizable and once the options are selected, the browses are created via code.

Obviously you can create, modify and reschedule appointments. This actions are based on a double click in the browse. You can block/unblock time for all or part of a day, create recurring events for individual columns or all columns for specified day/week/month combinations over a given time period. The appointments are color coded by the type of procedures to be performed using user-selected color combinations. There is a multi-day view and you can set up a sort of pre-blocking which guides the users in what types of procedures they should schedule on selected days abd times. You can search for free time by provider/location.

From an Alpha point of view, you simply have to build up the underlying main scheduler table before you do anything. You must establish your basic record set for each day. (We can also add time to the beginning or end of the day later, if required.) The browses are based on the main table and give it the kind of snappy performance we have when we switch between the different provider setups.

There's more but, as you can see I am quickly becoming a bore on the subject.

[Peter.Greulich]

Re: appointment book

It's not boring. But it is waaay cool!

[footquest]

Re: appointment book / Finian Lennon

I have a small podiatry office and I worked my way from alpha 4 to alpha 5 using the genies provided. Basically I dont have a great programming ability and I wouldnt mind not re-inventing the wheel. If I can purchase your scheduler and be able to modify it to my needs I would. So, can I?

any help will be very much appreciated

alan meyerberg
[email protected]

[Finian Lennon]

Re: appointment book

Sorry, it's not mine to sell. It's integrated into our Practice Management software.

I guess my point is that if you buy an off-the-shelf package, it may provide a lot of appointment-related bells and whistles for a low price but it won't really integrate into whatever software you use to run your practice.

[drgarytraub]

Re: appointment book

Finian,

Can your scheduler allow more than one appointment in the same time slot? If so, could you explain a bit.

[Finian Lennon]

Re: appointment book

Hi Gary:

Yes and No.

Typically we assign multiple columns for each time slot, generally 2, 3 or 4 columns. The most common usage assigns the columns to Provider 1 - Type 1, Provider 1 - Type 2, Provider 1 - Type 3 as shown in the graphic I uploaded. When set up this way, you can have as many appointments for a given time slot as you have columns.

If you were to set up the columns strictly by location (not many people do this) where the columns are labeled "Operatory 1", "Operatory 2 " etc then it would not be possible to have 2 appointments scheduled for Operatory 1 at the same time slot. On the other hand, if you anticipate this need you could set up the columns "Operatory 1", "Operatory 1 - Overflow", "Operatory 2 - Overflow", etc.

To have the basic views occupy a full screen without horizontal scrolling, the columns are dynamically sized. Obviously, the more columns the narrower they are and the less information that is immediately readable on the screen. The users can switch between views or, they can always choose "Cancel" to see all columns being used for the practice. These columns are sized to show a reasonable amount of data without having to widen them but generally to read all the on-screen details you have to widen the column with the mouse.

You can choose the content and order of the appointment details so that, for example, if you want to know who referred the patient, you can show that on the screen. Or if you want both home and business phone numbers. Or not. The same applies the daily printouts. They look much like what is shown on the screen but can be set up to contain a lot more information.

I am currently in the process of increasing the maximum number of columns (really column pairs - if you look at the graphic, you will see that there is a narrow column that shows the actual time slots in use and a details column that contains the appointment information) to 120. The current maximum is 90.

Of course, the users can never enter information directly into the views (browses) hence the need to code everything.

[drgarytraub]

Re: appointment book

Thanks Finian for such a detailed reply. It sounds like you have developed a really powerful scheduler. I will have to think for a while about what you wrote. I apppreciate it.

Gary