The London Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy

The thing to understand about the appointment manager is that it has a ‘concrete’ resource, which is the premises opening times and the rooms available. It then has a ‘notional’ idea of what is a therapist.

When a patient is researching appointment availability in the front-end, the appointment manager’s job to try to tie together the resources and the therapist to the maximum extent that it can.

When in ‘therapist’ mode, you are instructing the appointment manager about your actual working conditions – your work profile. Unless you alter things up, the appointment manager will assume that your work-profile is the same as the clinics: you are working 365 days per year from 7am to 11pm.

When you select therapist mode, your screen name appears, together with your email address & a confirmation that you are ‘active’. Click on your name in order to access the other functions that are discussed below.

Profile

When you select ‘Profile’ the screen with your contact details and login/username appears.
• if you need to update your email and mobile number you can do it here.
• your screen name also carries your mobile phone number after it. This is so that when a patient has made an appointment in the front-end they can make a note of your contact number.
• the only other point of interest is the notes section ‘profile’. This information is what is carried at the front-end if a patient asks to look at the therapist’s details & where they are working from. You can alter it up as you like, but lacap does reserve the right to edit it. You are not obliged to complete it.

You will need a bit of html coding to make it appear correctly on the front end. Things in brackets like this are commands: <>. Put the following letters in the <>brackets.
b = bold
b = remove bold
u = underline
/u = remove underline
br = line break
i = italic
/i = remove italics
hype = hyperlink
p= paragraph

If you need anything else try: http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com.

Schedule

The default schedule is 7 days a week, 7am to 11pm. We appreciate that you might not want to work all of those hours.

Altering up things in ‘schedule’ mode does two things.

Firstly, it organises what your diary looks look when you are in appointment mode.
If you deselect whole days to indicate that you are not working on them, then it is also removed from the appointment grid diary view.
If you organise your start and end ‘shift’ times, the non-working time for that day is ‘greyed out' in your diary view when you are in appointment mode.

Secondly, and most importantly, it indicates to the appointment manager what times it has available to it when it is trying to book patients in under your name. It restricts the appointment manager away from days that you have marked off as not working, and away from hours on a working day that are outside of your shift times.

This means that you have already dictated the broad terms of your exposure to initial consultations in the front-end. If you are not taking initial consultations, you might care anyway to accurately mark up your time in schedule mode – it organises how your diary looks and it allows lacap to check your availability for receiving new and assessed casework.

The thing to understand is that your broad schedule is a notional idea only. It does not tie you in to specific actual rooms in actual session times.

The other thing to bear in mind is that the appointment manager 'schedule' mode cannot cope with breaks in a shift. For instance, if you work from 10am to 16pm, that is clear, but if you want a lunchbreak you cannot organise it here - you must use 'Reserve Therapist time' to block out sections of the front-room profile.

This is the instruction to appointment manager about which rooms you want to use, and which rooms you want restricted or removed from your ‘notional’ profile’

By default you are able to use all rooms at all times.

The only problem this causes is that the appointment manager has only yes/no in its mind and not options preferring things. So, when a patient books in at the front-end the appointment manager will stuff them in any old opening, and will not be aware that you prefer to use a particular room.

In appointment manager you have the option to ‘deselect’ from particular rooms. You can select ‘Rooms’ in therapist mode and you can deselect particular rooms that you are confident that you will never work in.

This will work well if you are committed to using only one room for all session work.

You can reduce down from five rooms to, say, two of them, as well. Appointment Manager would then book in only for those two rooms. But it still leaves the problem that it might book in an assessment for the wrong room for that day.

There is no pre-emptive workable solution. The easiest ‘coping strategy’’ is to check which room has been assigned the assessment in the appointments grid mode (the room number appears first on the booking next to the patient’s name) and if necessary to go into that appointment booking and update the ‘select room’ to the correct room.

Sorry – but it is & will remain ‘one to watch out for’.

The other problem that deselecting rooms on a permanent basis leaves you with is that when researching for ‘one-off bookings’ appointment manager will automatically restrict your search to authorised (selected) rooms.

‘Coping Strategies’ for that are dealt with in the advice section ‘one-off bookings’.

Sessions Offered

This is about what type of sessions you are authorised to undertake, and the session fee codes that are appropriate to how you work.

Practically, the selected field terms organise the drop-down list that is presented to you in ‘make an appointment‘ mode.

The only real thing of concern here is ‘initial consultation’. If you are not taking assessments, or require a sudden absence from the front-room, then you can deselect that type of session from your menu. This will instruct the appointment manager not to include your name in the list of available therapists for patients researching initial consultations.

Lacap try to ensure that all the codes that you might need to use are available to you in ‘make an appointment’ mode. You should use the Session Code indicated in the patient record whenever you make a session for that patient. If you feel that you are missing service authorisations – let lacap know.

Days Off

This is a ‘no-brainer’.
Tick any days that you do not want to work.
If you have appointments scheduled for those days – it won’t let you.