Tracking patients through the day: Arrived, Ready, In progress

On a busy clinic day, the question is rarely whether someone is booked; it is where they are right now. Day statuses answer that.

The three day statuses

• Arrived. The patient is in the building.
• Ready. They are prepped and waiting for the practitioner.
• In progress. They are in the room being treated.

Setting one

1. Click the appointment on the Calendar to open its drawer.
2. Under Day status, tap Arrived, Ready or In progress. One tap saves it and closes the drawer. If you have unsaved changes, those are saved first; a failed save leaves the drawer open so you can correct it.
3. To remove an existing day status, open the drawer and tap Clear.

For appointments of 20 minutes or longer, the current day status shows in brackets on the appointment block itself, for example 10:00-10:30 (arrived), so anyone glancing at the diary can see the state of play without opening anything.

Day status versus appointment status

Day status is about the flow of today: it never changes whether the appointment is confirmed, completed or missed. The appointment status is the lasting record; the day status is the live whiteboard. If you mark an appointment as a no-show, any day status is cleared automatically, since the patient plainly is not in the building.

Where it earns its keep

With more than one practitioner, or a front-of-house person managing arrivals, day statuses replace the shouted where is Mrs Smith with a diary everyone can trust.