Appointment status

Appointments typically move through a series of states, which are called the Appointment Status in this data collection. Possible values for the appointment status are:

• available
• booked
• cancelled
• attended/seen
• DNA

Appointments in the past at the point data is collected from the system should not have the status booked, rather the appropriate final status that indicates whether a patient was seen or not or if the appointment remained available.

To reduce the number of booked appointments that do not transition into a final status of ‘Attended/Seen’, ‘DNA’ or ‘Cancelled’ ensure that:

• all appointments are set as ARRIVED/STARTED/ENTERED as the patient enters or answers the telephone/video call
• all appointments that have started are then closed and set to SEEN/COMPLETED as the patient leaves or disconnects from the telephone/video call
• all appointments in the past have a correct final status that indicates whether the patient was seen or not

To prevent booked appointments from remaining as ‘Booked’ when their status should be DNA, we recommend that practices configure the system to automatically mark unattended appointments as DNA overnight. This function will also operate for telephone appointments, allowing a healthcare professional some flexibility in deciding the order of calls to patients during the day.

The automatic DNAs can be switched on within the organisation preferences setting under unattended appointments.

Practices can also use the reporting tool within SystmOne to check for past appointments that still appear as booked and for which the correct final status needs to be applied.