Appointment Wait Lists

When a patient's preferred time slot for an appointment is not available, you can create a Wait List item for the patient. A Wait List Item is a means of holding the patient's place in line for an appointment that best meets their first preference.

Prior to adding the patient to a wait list, it may be desirable to schedule an interim appointment for the patient. This ensures the patient has an appointment, even though it may not be on the date/time they prefer.

The interim appointment exists until an appointment time slot and/or resource that meets the patient first preference, as recorded on the Wait List Item, becomes available. At that point, if the Wait List feature is configured to process automatically, the application creates a Worklog task that instructs the current user to convert the Wait List Item to an appointment for the patient. The application then deletes the interim appointment since the patient now has an appointment that meets his or her first preferences.

Reference: For information on setting up the Wait List feature, see the File Maintenance Guides for NextGen Enterprise.