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Adding standard working hours to a provider schedule
Adding standard working hours to a provider schedule
Updated over a week ago

🎞️ View video tutorials:

πŸ“Œ Note: You must have the Scheduling Settings permissions to set up provider schedules for your clinic.

Before you can book an appointment for a provider, they must have working hours set. You set working hours to define when their schedule is open for appointment booking and to define what appointment type(s) can be booked during those hours.

If you allow patients to self-book appointments online through your CHR eBooking site, defining a provider's working hours allows patients to choose available appointment times within those hours.

Use Standard Hours to set working hours that are the same each week. For example, a provider always sees new patients Mondays and Tuesdays from 8am to 4pm and always sees follow up patients every Friday from 9 am to 5 pm.

If a provider's schedule is different from week to week on certain days (for example, if they offer a Saturday clinic once a month), you can instead use Flexible Hours to set those specific working hours. Refer to Adding flexible working hours to a provider schedule.

⚠️ Important: You can have either standard or flex working hours applied to a specific time slot in the provider's schedule, not both.

When you set a provider's standard working hours, you define:

  • What hours are available for in-person or virtual appointments

  • The appointment types offered

  • The number of patients that can be booked in a single time slot

  • The appointment time slot intervals

If your clinic has multiple clinic locations, and a provider works out of more than one location, you can set unique working hours for each location.

If you offer different appointment types at different times in a day, you can add multiple blocks of working hours in the same day. For example, a provider offers initial consultations on Mondays from 8 am to 11 am, and follow up appointments from 1 pm to 5 pm.

πŸ“Œ Note: When a provider is available for appointments, the time appears white on the schedule (as opposed to the standard grey background). This allows you to clearly see provider availability.

Steps

1. From the main menu, click Settings > Scheduling > Hours

2. Beside the provider's name, click Edit, and then select Standard.
The Manage Work Hours window appears.
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πŸ’‘ Tip: To change the zoom level on the calendar, in the top-right corner, click the magnifying glass.

3. In the top-right corner, click Physical to configure hours for in-person visits, click Virtual to configure hours for virtual visits.

πŸ“Œ Note: The number in brackets indicate the number of working hour blocks configured.

4. In the schedule, click a day and time to configure working hours. If you are modifying working hours, click a work hour block to edit it.
The Add Work Hour or Update Work Hour window appears.
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5. Using the following table, configure the working hours.

Field

Description

Location

If your clinic has multiple locations, select the clinic location these working hours are for.

πŸ’‘ Tip: The default is your primary location.

Visit type

Select Physical for in-person visits and Virtual for virtual visits.

πŸ’‘ Tips:

  • If the provider meets patients over the phone: use Physical so the patient isn't sent a video invite.

  • To have both Physical and Virtual hours scheduled at the same time, create two Flexible Hours.

Start

Select the time the provider starts seeing patients for the specified services.

Until

Select the time the provider finishes seeing patients for the specified services (i.e. the end of the last appointment for the working hour block).
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πŸ“Œ Notes:

  • For example, if your day ends at 5:00 pm, select 5:00 pm. If you offer 30 minute appointments, the latest one can start is 4:30 pm.

  • Patients can't ebook outside of this time.

Colour on schedules

Choose a colour you want to see on the schedule along the left side of these work hours.

πŸ’‘ Tip: Choose a unique colour for each provider schedule for clearer visualization of which schedule belongs to which provider.

Slot

Select the number of patients (1-10) that can be booked in one time slot.

Intervals

Select the start time intervals staff can pick when searching availability and see on the schedule if Show on scheduler is enabled.

Patients who can book online also see the selected interval.

You can choose increments of 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 45, or 60 minutes.

For example, if Intervals are 15 minutes, search and eBooking show times that start on the :00, :15, :30, or :45. If set to 10 minutes, then :00, :10, :20, :30, :40, or :50.

Show on scheduler

Select this checkbox to display a thicker line on the schedule at each time interval - making it easier to book appointments at the correct intervals.

Stacking

This option is for eBooking only.

When patients search for available appointments and they select a date, if this option is set to On, the CHR eBooking site provides only the first available appointment on that day as an option (without allowing the patient to select a time).

This is known as "appointment stacking" because it fills up each day's schedule from earliest to latest and prevents gaps between appointments.

Services

Select the appointment type(s) you offer during these working hours, or click All to select all appointments your clinic offers.
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πŸ“Œ Note: When you book an appointment the services offered appear in bold and the others are greyed out. You can enable a feature that hides the greyed out appointment types. Refer to Limiting appointment type options when booking appointments.

πŸ“Œ Note: To indicate lunch or administrative time, do not add working hours in the specific time slot. Leave them blank or fill them by creating lunch or admin time templates. Refer to Creating templates to block time off.

6. To delete a work hour block, select it and then, at the top right, click the trash icon.

7. Click Save.

8. Repeat the above steps for each working hour block, either in the same or different day.

9. Once you have added all your working hours, click Save.

10. Refresh your browser to see the standard working hours in the provider's schedule.

Updated September 13, 2024

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