About
Definition
A 'next appointment' is the next future appointment for a patient. To determine which appointment is the next appointment we compare the start date and time of appointments to the current time.
This is an important distinction as the next appointment for a patient may change throughout the course of a day. For example, a patient has a 1PM appointment today.
They call early that morning to check when their appointment is. The screen will say 13:00.
After they come out from seeing the doctor, say 30 minutes later at 13:30, the screen will now say that they don't have a next appointment.
Performance
Finding the next appointment for a patient is a relatively intensive database operation. Basically, you may find that it impacts performance, so you may want to disable them where appropriate.
Usage
There are a number of places where you can view the Next Appointment.
Patient Details
Selecting/Searching for a patient and viewing their details from the Accounting screen.
Appointment Search
Search for Patient appointments (more information here).
Add Appointment
This was added in 2017 R1.
Can be enabled via Appointment Book >> Setup Menu >> General >> Check Already Booked
It is not recommended to use this if you have multiple or recurring bookings per patient.
This is the warning that will come up if you create an appointment for a patient who already has a future booking.
Appointment Book Footer
This was added in 2017 R1.
Can be disabled via Appointment Book >> Setup Menu >> General >> Show Next Appointment In Footer
