Medical Director/Pracsoft Troubleshooting Follow

This article will go through various troubleshooting you may need to perform if you experience any issues whilst using our Pracsoft Integration and general education about the integration. 

Click on one of the following topics to jump to that area:

Blocking out availability manually

Breaking up session times to restrict online availability at certain times

Reserved appointments

Creating a fake patient to book availability

Inactive practitioners, hidden availability, and hidden session times

There are 4 ways to create on the day appointments or block availability showing online. The following describes four different methods that allow you to create on-the-day appointments in Pracsoft.

Option 1: Block out manually

Manually block the appointments by following these instructions:

1. Select the time slot or a range of slots.
2. Type "On the day" or whatever you'd like to call them.
3. Press Ctrl+Enter.

When you press Ctrl+Enter, it will fill all of the selected slots in with 'On the day' (or whatever text you typed in the previous step).

This will block the availability and display the words "On the day" so practice staff know they can book appointments in there.

This can be a good way to micro-manage availability, but could be difficult to maintain during extended busy times because you have to manually add them in wherever you want them in advance.

You would need to block them out far enough into the future (usually 30 days) to stop them being available online.

Time-saver: Select many slots at a time all over the day by holding Ctrl when you click, or when you click and drag, then start typing.

Option 2: Break up the sessions

Break up the sessions during the day and select the 'Other location' checkbox for the sessions you don't want showing online.

This will make it automated, but adds a small element of complexity to managing sessions. Check if it works first, but if the other location sessions are still showing online after a couple of hours, please email the Support team support@healthengine.com.au and we can update your configuration.

Option 3: Add reserved appointments

1. Right click on any available slot in the appointment book and select 'Add Reserved Appointment'. You can also use the 'Appointment' menu at the top of the screen.
2. Select the practitioner, date range, and frequency, then click 'Process'. Once you're happy with the times click 'Close'.

The program will generate the range of reserved appointments.

This can be recurring every x times during the day, and from x date to x date.

Time-saver: When creating an appointment in a reserved slot, if you simply select it and start typing a patient's name it will give you a warning 'Non-Session Time selected!', which is fine, it just means an extra step to click ok before you can add the appointment. To bypass the message, simply select the reserved slot and hit F3. 

Option 4: Create a patient called 'On the day'

Create a new patient called 'On the day', then add appointments as usual, or add recurring appointments. [Recurring] works the same as [Reserved] appointments except you just add the 'On the day' patient appointment into a slot first, then right click and select 'Add Recurring Appointment'.

Bogus Availability

If you're experiencing one or more of the following issues;

• Availability showing online that's outside session times.
• Availability showing online that's already been booked or blocked out.
• Online bookings that don't show up in Pracsoft (you receive the booking confirmation email, or you see the booking in your Healthengine Practice Admin, but it's not in Pracsoft).

This is a common issue and can be fixed by better understanding the configuration options of Pracsoft and how they affect availability on Healthengine.

Read carefully here because the terminology/lingo means a lot; in fact most of this tutorial is based on it.

In the appointment book, go to Setup > Practitioners. This will show you a list of practitioners that are [active] within the appointment book you are currently in.

Notice I have the 'Show inactive practitioners' checkbox unchecked.

I'll attempt to describe the difference between the various terminology and its relevance to HealthEngine availability.

• User ID: This is a simple representation of the practitioner's name. It is irrelevant to HealthEngine availability.
• Location: This is used to determine the physical location of the practitioner. It is a free text field and will be linked to the practitioner's name at HealthEngine. It is very relevant in terms of any changes to existing practitioners, or if you add a new practitioner into the appointment book. If this changes it will create a new appointment book for them in HealthEngine that will need to be connected.
• Practitioner: Very relevant, changes will create a new appointment book in HealthEngine that will need to be connected.
• Use: This being unchecked will not remove the practitioner from the appointment book; it's a user-based setting that simply shows a practitioner on that workstation or not. In a technical sense this is irrelevant; however, it's the most common mistake because availability still exists if they're an active practitioner whether they're 'Used' or not. You might think they're not even in the appointment book because you're not 'using' them. Remember, it's a per-user setting to [show/hide] the practitioner on a workstation. The other receptionist might 'Use' that practitioner.
• Active or Inactive: To completely remove a practitioner from an appointment book you need to make them inactive. To do that, select them from the list and click 'Edit', select the 'Mark as inactive' checkbox, then click 'Save'.
  
  If you have the 'Show inactive practitioners' checkbox unchecked, that practitioner should now be removed from the list and from that appointment book.
• The 'Show inactive practitioners' checkbox is not relevant to availability, it simply shows them in that list or not.

It's the hidden availability within sessions that usually causes bogus availability and, at the same time, the appointments that are booked via the bogus availability will go into the hidden sessions. You will find the bookings if you 'Use' the practitioner.

Even in other appointment books, if both the 'Practitioner' and 'Location' match, that will conflict and cause bogus availability, double bookings, and missing appointments within the hidden sessions or in other appointment books.