BEFORE YOU START
OutSmart EMR Transition Guide for Clinics
INITIAL SETUP
Create Your Account The OutSmart Interface Explore The Dashboard Create Your Calendar Event Types Scheduling Basics Setup Your Hours Of Operation Setup Online Booking Create Your First OutSmart Dispensary Copy Calendar Event Types Into the Dispensary Invoicing Basics Charting Basics Basic Document Management OutSmart Meet Tele-Medicine Quick-Start Guide How to Setup Your Subscription
BUILD YOUR TEAM
Invite or Remove Practitioners And Staff Managing Your Team’s Permissions Understanding Patient List Privacy For Teams Schedule Live Training
GET READY FOR LAUNCH
Import Data From Previous Systems Pre-Launch Checklist

Setup Your Hours Of Operation

Configure Your Working Hours

Hours Of Operation in OutSmart EMR are a Background Event Type created within the Calendar.  They serve two purposes.  First, they visually define your working hours in the calendar, so that you can easily see when you will taking patients. Secondly, they define the rules by which your online booking system will function.

Creating Simple Hours Of Operation

Hours Of Operation background events are created the same way as any other event in your calendar.  This also means that they have all the flexibility of regular events in the calendar.  They can be one-off or repeating, they can stop and resume at any point in time, and they can be deleted and moved around.  To create a background event, click anywhere in the calendar to open up the Calendar Event Editor.

The event editor allows you to specify the properties of your background event.  Let’s say for example that you want to create a weekly repeating Hours Of Operation event on Thursday from 9am to 5pm.  You would first select the ‘Hours of operation’ event type, and then select the weekly repeating option. Set it to Thursdays, and select and end date (if any).  Here’s how that would look:

Calendar Event Editor showing the setup for a simple Hours Of Operation event, repeating weekly every Monday.

When you click on save, the Hours Of Operation event will be created as a Background Event, which means that it lies in the background behind your regular events.  Background events cannot be edited by single click like regular events.  Their purpose is to stay in the background and help to organize and categorize your schedule.  To edit or modify a background event in any way, you can double click on them.

Editing Hours Of Operation

You can edit any background event by double clicking on it.

If you are modifying a repeating set of Hours Of Operation events, an additional dialog will come up asking for the scope of the change.  The options will be to modify this event, this and following events, or all events.

When editing a recurring event, you can specify the scope of the change.

  • Modify All Events means that you are modifying all of the events in this recurring set of events, including past and future events in this series.
  • This Event means that you are modifying only this specific event in the series.  This selection will result in the splitting of a series of events.  You will have a series of events that preceded this specific event, a series of events that follow this specific event, and the specific event itself, which will be turned into a single, non-repeating event with the changes you specified.
  • This and Following Events means that you are changing this specific event and all following events in the series.  This will result in the splitting of the original series of events into two sets:  All preceding events, and all events from now on.

Creating Complex Hours Of Operation

Complex Hours Of Operation events are the same as Simple Hours Of Operation events, with the additional restriction of a specific event type.  These kinds of events will only allow patients to book a specific set of event types when using the online booking system.  As always, when you are booking manually, there are no restrictions.

For example, if you wanted to create an Hours Of Operation event where you wanted to restrict booking to only Acupuncture and First Visits, you would first select the Hours Of Operation event type, and then continue to select the Acupuncture and First Visit event types as well.  Everything else will be the same as a Simple Hours Of Operation event.  Here is what that would look like:

Select additional event types to restrict the hours of operation to only those event types.

It is important to note that if you create any Hours Of Operation event where there are no additional event types selected (ie simple Hours Of Operation event), then you are allowing all online booking events types to be booked then.

Blocking Off Your Schedule

This video will demonstrate how to block off time in your calendar / schedule for things like breaks, vacations, etc.  Blocking off time in your schedule has an immediate effect on Online Booking availability, however it is always possible for your or your admin staff to book in patients manually even if you are blocked off.