Scheduling

From $1

Creating A Doctor's Schedule

1. Introduction

Synapse-EMR uses what is known as a dialect, or domain specific language, to specify a doctor's schedule. Although this sounds very formidable, it in fact a very simple way of defining schedules that can be easily copied to other doctors in your practise.

However, it does require that the "program" you write must be syntactically correct or otherwise Synapse-EMR will not be able to understand what is being asked. Computers are very literal and do what you say, not what you want.

The dialect understands dates, days of the week, times in 24 hour clock, and time periods.

 working Monday period 20 start 9:30

simply means, that this staff member is working Mondays, he sees patients in 20 min blocs, and starts work at 9:30 Am.

2. Keywords

2.1 Working

As we have seen above, "working" defines a working day. It also requires the keywords "period" which specifies the standard time allocated for each patient, and "start" which specifies what time that day starts.

2.1.1 period

Takes an integer

    period 30

2.1.2 start

Takes a time

    start 9:00

2.2 Block

"Block" is used to close off a time period during the working day. It takes a start time, a finish time, and optionally a reason

 block 12:00 to 13:00 for lunch
 block 10:00 to 10:20 for "morning tea"
 block 15:00 to 15:30

The first means to block one hour for lunch, the second blocks 20 mins for morning tea ( note that quote marks are required when there is a space in the reason), and the last blocks 30 mins off starting at 3 pm.

Although these periods are blocked off visually, appointments can still be scheduled in these periods - the person doing the booking will just receive a warning.

2.3 Finish

"Finish" just takes a time at which the day finishes.

 finish 19:30

2.4 Away

Away blocks off days of the week, a particular day, or a range of dates.

 away every Wednesday at "Beverley Hills Golf Club"
 away from 24-Dec-2006 to 7-Jan-2007 on "Xmas Holidays"
 away 8-Aug-2006 on Conference
 away 9-Aug-2006 at "Palm Beach"

2.4.1 Every

"Every" is used to specify recurring weekly events

 every Wednesday

2.4.2 From To On

"From" "To" "On" are used to specify a range of dates

3. Example

 working Tuesday period 30 start 9:30
 block 10:00 to 10:15 for "morning tea"
 block 12:00 to 13:00 for lunch 
 finish 17:30
 away every Wednesday at "Beverley Hills Golf"
 away from 25-Dec-2006 to 4-Jan-2007 on "Xmas Holidays"

Here's an example for Tuesday. The doctor starts work at 9:30, sees patients in 30 min periods, has a 15 minute break at 10:00Am for morning tea, a break at 12:00 for one hour for lunch, and then works thru to finish at 17:30. On Wednesday he always has an important business meeting with colleagues. And he has already booked his Christmas holidays.

4. Implementation

Select the PEOPLE/STAFF tab, the "Setup Staff" tab below that, and click "REFRESH". Select the doctor whom you wish to create a schedule for, click on "STAFF SCHEDULES", paste the schedule you have created, or type it in directly.

The TEST button will tell you if it is syntactically correct or  not ... ie. whether Synapse will understand it!

The UPDATE button will save any changes you make.  You may need to restart Synapse though to see them.

The EXAMPLE button will fill the display with an example schedule that you can alter and then update. 

7-May-2006