Part of Data quality guidance for general practice using SystmOne
Mode of appointment
Mode of appointment describes the method by which a patient interaction with a healthcare professional is planned to be or was carried out during an appointment, depending on when the data was collected. For example, face-to-face, telephone, video, or home visit.
Practices are asked to accurately record the intended mode of the appointment, or the initial mode of response to a clinical triage contact. If the mode changes during the appointment, such as from ‘telephone’ to ‘video consultation’, the appointment book does not need to be updated to reflect this.
Actions requested from practices
There is a new field on the Slot Type dialog where you can configure the appointment method.
1. To create a new slot type or amend an existing slot type go to Setup > Appointments > Slot Types. Once on this screen, press the 'New Slot Type' button or the 'Amend Slot Type' button as appropriate.
2. This will launch the new/amend slot type dialog, with the new Appointment Method option.
3. Map the slot type to an appointment method.
The appointment method field has the following options:
| Face to Face | Maps to GPAD option Face to Face (Surgery) |
| Home Visit | Maps to GPAD option Face to Face (Home Visit) |
| Written/Online | Maps to GPAD option Written (Including Online) |
| Telephone | Maps to GPAD option Telephone/Audio |
| Video Consultation | Maps to GPAD option Video with Audio |
Note that the ‘Not an Appointment’ option is not in this list (further details below).
The appointment methods are in fact just a sub-set of appointment flags and will exhibit the same behaviour as the other flags in the system. Choosing an appointment method is mandatory when creating or amending a slot type and you can only choose a single appointment method per slot type.
Any existing slot type that you already had configured to have one of the following appointment flags will automatically have this set in the appointment method field. This avoids the need to re-set this information on slot types:
- Telephone consultation
- Video consultation
- Home visit
It is possible that your practice does not utilise some of the available appointment methods (such as Video Consultations). These options will still be available in the list of available appointment methods. Care should be taken to ensure that you select only appropriate options.
Slot types that are not appointments
Any slot types that are configured as a ‘Blocked’ slot type will be output in the GPAD extract with an appointment method of ‘Not an Appointment’. This is why this option does not appear in the drop-down list of appointment methods.
The blocked slot function is designed to be used when you wish to block out time in your diary for any activity that is not an appointment.
To ensure the accuracy of the data in GPAD extract, all practices are encouraged to review the appointment method set on all existing slot types. If necessary, you should change the method so that it reflects the intention of this appointment. For any new slot types that are created going forward, you will be forced to select an appropriate appointment method.
As mentioned previously, any existing slot type that you already had configured to have telephone, video or home visit flags will automatically have this set in the appointment method field. This avoids the need to re-set this information on these slot types. For all other slot types, this value will default to face to face.
To avoid any concern around this change, be aware that all other appointment functionality is unchanged and will continue to operate as normal so there will be no impact on the day-to-day appointment system behaviour because of this change.
Last edited: 23 May 2023 10:35 am