Diary: The Waiting Room List

Waiting room lists are just like any other diaries which have been set up using the initialisation program. To use common terminology, they can be either forward or current waiting room lists. This will depend upon whether you have set them up with timed appointment slots or not. In either case Premvet 5 handles them in exactly the same way.

The waiting room list program is accessed from the main menu and is based on the look and feel of the standard appointments diary. The program will automatically display the user's default waiting room/appointment diary.

Note: You can set up the system so that you have two different defaults - one for the waiting room list and one for the appointments diary. You can set up the default waiting rooms for a user or a surgery (if there is no default for the user, the default for the surgery is used) by the 'set defaults' option in the initialisation program. <M>enu from the diary prompt, then <I>nitialisation program, then <S>et defaults.

Once you have accessed a waiting room list, the following prompt will be displayed:

Up Down Edit Arrivals Comings Ins Topays Swch Here! Gone! Retr

• The options 'Arrivals', 'Comings', 'Ins', and 'Topays' each generate a list: in these cases a real-time list of people who have arrived, who are due to come in, people who are being seen, and people who are waiting to pay respectively.
• The exclamation marks in 'Here!' and 'Gone!' signify that the command concerned performs an action, i.e. marks a client on the waiting room list as being here or having left respectively. (There is no real-time list of people who have left). The default for the waiting room prompt line is 'Here!'.

There is an invisible option 'X' to switch between the waiting room list and the standard appointments diary display. You will notice that the command line is slightly different from the appointments diary but it has commands which allow moving, booking, cancelling and switching diaries or waiting room lists just like the standard appointments diary does. In fact it has all the commands the standard appointments diary has other than moving to a day other than today, setting up diaries and block bookings etc. However if you go into the waiting room list without having any diary files set up you will be taken to the initialisation program.

• <N>ext, <B>ack, <W>eek, <G>oto and <J>ump are missing, because the waiting room commands are strictly for the current day.

• <U>p, <D>own, <E>dit and <S>wch do the same things as they do in the appointments diary.

• <R>etrieve is similar to the view command. The main difference is that when you retrieve clients from the waiting room list, as opposed to viewing them from the appointments diary, the entry in the comment field changes to:

  ***BEING SEEN***
  

  to show that the client is being seen as far as anybody else who subsequently accesses that diary page from the waiting room list display is concerned. There is an invisible option <V> from the waiting room list prompt which acts in the same way as <V>iew from the appointments diary and does not affect the waiting room status.

• If the client concerned had been seen at the time when the waiting room list was displayed on the screen, it would say:

  ***TO PAY*** 50.00
  

  where the amount after the text refers to the amount which the client owed at that moment in time. In a similar way to retrieving clients who come in, you can retrieve clients who have been seen according to the waiting room list, to enter any payments they wish to make and the text is updated accordingly.

• If you have open surgeries and therefore use a current waiting room list without timed slots, a useful command is <H>ere!, which marks a slot to say:

  *** ARRIVED ***
  

  plus the time. You can then easily see how long people have been waiting. This command will also work if the slots are timed. This works like the retrieve command except the prompt reads:

  Up Down Mark Quit
  

  The program will ask you for the time to mark the client as having arrived at, and this will default to [Now].

• The command <L>eft! will similarly mark a slot in the waiting room list, marking a line like this:

  ***LEFT*** 12:23
  

  but without asking for the time.

None of the above displays are in real time. That is, they are only retrieved from file once. Following this retrieval, the display remains static and does not take account of any changes which are made while it is on the screen. However there are also 4 different real time displays, that is, the files are constantly checked and the display on the screen constantly changes to show the latest state of affairs, changing approximately every 5-10 seconds.

To Pay List These 4 real time displays are designed to show:

1. the clients who are waiting to come in,
2. those who are in the waiting room,
3. those who are being seen, and
4. those who have been seen.

The commands to access these displays are Arrivals, Comings , Ins and Topays respectively.

• The 'Comings' display shows those who are due to come in and these comprise the clients booked into the currently displayed waiting room list who have not been marked as ***ARRIVED***, ***BEING SEEN***, ***TO PAY***, or ***LEFT***.

• The 'Arrivals' real time display is very similar. Those who are considered to be 'here' comprise all those whose comment field reads ***ARRIVED***.

• The 'Ins' display looks at all entries in the currently displayed waiting room list to see if the comment is '***BEING SEEN***'.

• The 'Topays' display looks at the clients who have ***TO PAY*** in their comment field in the currently displayed waiting room list.

In all of the 4 real time displays, except the 'Ins' display, clients can be retrieved by pressing the letter of the alphabet which appears next to the entry. This will be highlighted and the highlight bar can be moved.

Global real time lists
If you are using more than one waiting room list at the same time, the global real time list will display the overall status of your different waiting rooms. When entering any of the four real time lists, the global real time list is shown the first time the facility is used. At that point, you may press the invisible option 'X', which changes the real time list shown to the current waiting room list, and this remains the default from then on during the current waiting room list session, or until it is changed back to the global list by the X command.

In the global real time list the program examines all waiting room lists which are indicated as belonging to the current branch or surgery. This depends on the answer which was given to the question 'Surgeries to access as waiting room list' when the diary was set up, or alternatively the setting this was changed to by the Change permissions options.

Clients are displayed from all of the waiting room lists which are accessible as far as this parameter is concerned, and the entries which are chosen from the waiting room lists are those which would appear in the same type of real time list if the list was run for that waiting room individually.

For each waiting room list which has an entry shown on the global real time list, a letter is shown next to the first entry for that waiting room. The user can then switch back to the list for that waiting room only by pressing the letter of the alphabet concerned, and then the user can select the individual client from that display.

The real time displays default to the global version first.

On entering the waiting room list display, if the clients at the top of the waiting room list have already left, the display initially lists the first client on the list who is not marked as having left, and the following screenful. The previous clients are then still accessible by scrolling back up the screen, but this has removed the problem on large waiting room lists of the display defaulting to a screenful of people who have already left and the user having to scroll down to the section of the waiting room list which is active.

The '+' command
If the '+' is used to add clients to the waiting room lists and multiple lists are in use then you are prompted for the list to add to.

The '+' command uses the parameter 'Surgeries to read as waiting room list' in order to decide which waiting room to add clients to. This parameter is requested when setting up a new diary, and can be changed by the Change permissions option in the Initialisation menu. This parameter requires the user to enter the numbers of the surgeries which will be able to use the diary as a waiting room list. For example, if surgeries 1 and 2 use it as a waiting room list, enter '12'; or, if the diary being set up is only to be used as a waiting room list at branch 3, enter '3' etc. In this way the '+' command will work in the way intended at each different branch.

If, when the '+' command is used, there is more than one diary which is accessible as a waiting room list by the branch the user is at, a choice will appear on the bottom line allowing the user to choose which waiting room list the '+' will put the client on to. If there is one where the name begins with the same letter as the user i.d. of the current user, this will be highlighted as the default. If there are more than 5 diaries which are accessible in this way from the current branch, (unlikely) there will not be enough room to display these along the prompt line, so the user is asked to type in the diary required.

The '!' command

The '-' command
The '-' command to retrieve a client, on the other hand, is based on the default waiting room list for the USER who is logged on, and not the BRANCH.

Using only one waiting room list
It may be that instead of using the method above, practices may prefer to have only one waiting room list per surgery, and indicate on that list which vet (if any) the client would prefer to see.

Users can do this by answering the question 'Vet to see, <0> for any [0]'. If the user accepts the default, this means that any user can retrieve that client from the waiting room list by the '-' command when they are the next one to be seen.

Alternatively, the first initial of the vet the client wishes to see can be entered. So for example, if 'E' is entered, then only users logged on with user i.d.'s beginning with 'E' can retrieve the client automatically when the client comes to the top of clients to be seen on the waiting room list. The entry on the waiting room list for clients who have arrived and wish to see a particular vet has the letter of the vet they wish to see in brackets after their arrival time.

If another user wishes to retrieve a client on the waiting room list who wishes to see someone else (because that vet has had to leave unexpectedly, etc.) this can still be done by manually retrieving the client from the waiting room list.

In order to streamline the operating of this new facility, users attempting unsuccessfully to retrieve a client from the waiting room list (because all the clients left want to see somebody else) will be informed that there are other people still on it by the message:

Problem: No clients for you (X arrivals still on list)

This facility is provided in both the '+' command and in manually marking a client as having arrived in the waiting room list itself.

This feature should not be confused with the Mark personnel feature which is designed for use in the appointments diary, i.e. for making future appointments, as a rough guide to which vet will be on during a particular surgery and is thus more suitable for practices with one consulting room on the go at the one time.

Clients can also be added to a waiting room list by means of the plus <+> command from the opening menu or the client's management record. In the former case you are asked first to give the number of the client to be added to the waiting room list, before being asked which diary/waiting room list to add to. The default to this question is the first diary/waiting room list on file which is marked as being able to be accessed by the terminals at the surgery concerned. This feature only works properly on diaries/waiting room lists which have untimed slots.

Clients can be retrieved either from the main menu, or at the management record display by means of the <-> command. This looks at the default waiting room list for the current user (or surgery if none has been set) to find the client on the list who has been marked as ***ARRIVED*** and has the earliest time.

In retrieving from the real time displays, or the standard waiting room display (but not the appointments diary), or retrieving with the <-> command, priority is given first to sudden emergency cases. If an emergency arrives, this should be logged with the <!> command from the main menu, or from the management record for the client concerned. If there is more than one emergency, the earliest arrival has priority.

When you have retrieved a client from the waiting room list, or by the '-' command, you are asked for the client's new waiting room status when leaving that client's record. You may enter either:

<B>lank <A>rrived <T>opay <L>eft <Q>uit

Waiting room status is reset as specified by the user when using the '-' command from the management record if already using a retrieved client.

The command '#', which can be used like the '+', '!' and '-' from the main menu or from the client management card, retrieves the next client waiting to pay.

Waiting room status is reset as specified by the user when using the '-' command from the management record if already using a retrieved client.

The reference of the vet who saw the client appears in brackets after the status and time for clients who have left.