Summary
There is a Utility within Cloud 9 that is able to re-assign Providers and/or Assistants that are scheduled to see patients on a specific day to a different provider or assistant. Whether a provider/assistant is out sick for the day or a provider has left the practice, or any other reason - this utility can change, en masse, the assigned provider or assistant for any given scheduled date. This is not the method for changing the assigned provider for the patients in the practice to a new provider, such as in the case of a retiring doctor. There are different Utilities for that, seen here: How to use the Update Patient Utility.
In this Article, you will learn how to use this Utility to update patient's appointments.
Note: In order to use this utility you will need to have the 'Run Utility' permission enabled for your employee record, which can be found in Edit > Setup > Employees.
Initial Familiarization
Before changing any information, let's get acquainted with our working screens. To access the Update Schedule Utility, go to Edit > Run Utility > Update Schedule Utility.
Once at the utility itself, your screen should look like the one shown below.
At the upper right of this screen, notice the circling arrows (Refresh) button, and right next to it, the update button, which is lighter in color and cannot be selected. The fields in the Filter section, as well as the Update section need to be completed before the update button will become available for your use. The close button is at the far upper right, in case you want to leave the utility altogether. Also notice that the screen comes up with No Records showing in the bottom half of the screen. That is simply because we have not provided the necessary filter information yet.
Using the Utility
The setup of this utility begins in the Filters section. On the screenshot shown below, notice that the Date Range (Start Date and End Date fields) has been selected. Since our purpose for the use of this utility is to re-assign all patients being seen on one day, in one specific appointment type, to a different provider, we will only select one day for the date range. The Schedule View field will be populated via the dropdown menu for the location of the schedule that you want to see. We have selected Roswell for the purposes of this exercise. Since our Provider assignment is only for the ADJ - Detail 40 Appointment Type, we will select that from the dropdown list. Your dropdown list will include all Appointment Types in your specific database. From this list you have the option to Select All, one, or some Appointment Types. At least one Appointment Type must be selected.
For the next two fields, Provider and Assistant, select the ones to which the patients on that date are currently assigned. Once all of your fields have been identified, press the Refresh button near the upper right of the screen. This provides the list of patients that meet the criteria you have identified to show in the bottom section of the screen.
Once you have the filters identified, it is time to proceed to the Actions section, shown below.
In the Actions section, you have the options to Set to Provider and Set to Assistant. You only have to do one of these. For this exercise, we are only changing the Provider. In the example shown below, we have our Provider selected.
Once the Set to Provider field has been selected, the list on the bottom of the screen stays the same, and the Update button is still unavailable. That is because we have not selected those records in the bottom screen that we want to make this change for. The options are to select the box to the left of the Appointment Date header which will select all appointments, or to individually select specific appointments by checking individual boxes next to the chosen appointments. Once at least one record is checked, the Update button will become available for use.
After you click the Update button, the results will appear like this.
Do not be alarmed by this screen. It only means that the Update has worked. Notice that the previously assigned doctor's information is still in the filter fields. Since the schedule was updated correctly, no more patients meet that criteria. But if we now select our newly identified provider, all those moved over will show correctly, as seen below.
Conclusion
For whatever the reason, if you need to have the provider or assistant name changed on some or all of the appointments already on a schedule, this utility is for you. Again, if you are permanently changing all patients in your practice to a different provider, this utility is not the mechanism to do that.
As always, if you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to Cloud 9 Support by emailing us at cloud9support@planetdds.com, or chatting us online using the chat bubble on the lower right at https://cloud9support.planetdds.com/hc/en-us, or giving us a call during our business hours of 8:00 AM EST to 8:00 PM EST at 1.800.394.6050 option 2.