The clinic appointment rule should be considered an appointment template as multiple providers can apply this template to their personal schedule. All settings in these templates are copied over to the provider's personal schedule when activated. On their own, clinic appointment rules do nothing.
Clinic Appointment Rule:
- In Settings, go to Schedules, then click on Clinic Appointment Rule.
- Click on New Appointment Rule.
- Fill in the name of the template Rule Name.
- The Start Days Default allows pre booking x days in advance.
- The End Days Default closes the booking window x days in advance. If it is set to 1 for example, then patients cannot book same day appointments but can only book for the next day onward.
- The Start Time Default is typically not set or set at 12AM to allow the patient to start booking at the start of the day. However, clients may wish to customize this field.
- The End Time Default closes the booking window of the day. For example, if it is set at 12pm, then patients can no longer book same day appointments after noon.
- Priority Default assigns visibility priority of any given appointment type. So, if a "regular appointment" is assigned priority 0, then it will show higher on the list of appointment types.
- The Increment Default divides an availability block into smaller bookable chunks, and is usually the shortest appointment length of the provider's appointment types. For example, if there is a 9am - 11am availability block, and the increment is set at 15 minutes, then the system will create 8 availability spots.
- The External ID is not use at this time.
- Click on Save Changes to commit.
