Attend a patient

Add a patient to the Waiting Room so their attendance can be managed and billed correctly. You can do this from the appointment book when a patient arrives or from the patient's record if you're using the Waiting Room to manage an operations list.

For an overview of the patient management workflow, see the Waiting Room article.

Considerations

When a patient arrives for an appointment, an Attendance Details form is used to add them to the Waiting Room.  The form creates an attendance record that any subsequent invoice will be linked to.  

Patient attendance considerations:

• An attendance record can be created from the Patient Details screen or the Appointments Display Grid. 
• An attendance can be booked in advance by adjusting the Date and Time in the Attendance Details screen. Some practices do this to manage their operation lists or home/hospital visits.
• You can also use the Attendance Report to print a list of attendances for one or all doctors for each day.
• Walk-in patients and those with no appointments can be attended using the Quick Attend option.

Attend a patient

This section follows the most common scenario, where a patient arrives for an appointment and is attended from the Appointments Display Grid. You can also attend a patient from within the Patient Details screen by selecting Attend from the menu.

To add a patient to the Waiting Room:

1. Go to Zedmed's Reception tab.
2. Select Appointments.
   The Appointments Display Grid screen will open. If the screen was already open, select Refresh. 
3. Locate the patient.
4. Right-click their name and select Attend.
   The Attendance Details screen will open.
5. By default, the Doctor field will have the patient's doctor selected.
   If the doctor seeing the patient is unknown, select Doctor, Unknown.   The correct doctor can be confirmed later by returning to the Attendance form from the Waiting Room list (double-click the patient's line).
6. If the appointment is a referral, check it is attached.
   If it's not, select Referrals to open the Referral Pick screen and select the referral. If the patient has multiple referrals, the one relevant to the current visit can be selected. If referral details are not selected within this screen, they will not appear on the invoice when billing. To learn more, see the Add a referral for billing.
7. The following fields are optional:
   
   
   • Department -If the visit involves a department of the practice, it can be noted for display on the Waiting Room list.
   • Site Details - If the attendance is at a site remote from the surgery (such as a nursing home, hospital or home address), this can be recorded and new sites can be created through Management/Practice Setup/Site Details. The site is recorded on the Encounter Sheet with an address for the doctor's benefit.
   • Claim Details - If the patient has any claims related to the attendance, they can be selected here. If the claim details are not selected within this screen, they will not appear on the invoice when billing.
   • Notes - Any information entered in the notes field can be seen by the doctors in the Waiting Room screen.
8. Select one of the Print tick-boxes to print a Medicare Proforma account (DB4 without an item), an Encounter sheet or a Case label.
9. Close the Attendance Details screen by selecting one of the following options.
   
   
   • Close - an entry will be created in the Waiting Room and you will be returned to the original screen you were in (Patient Details or Appointments). Selecting the Waiting Room icon from the top menu will take you to it. 
   • Waiting Room - an entry will be created in the Waiting Room and you will then be taken to the Waiting Room screen.
   • Patient Details -  an entry will be created in the Waiting Room list, and you will be returned to the Patient Details screen, where you can update a phone number or click on Online PV etc.
10. You can now view the patient in the Waiting Room.
    To see how to manage the attended patient, see the Manage the Waiting Room article.
    

Unattend a patient

If a patient has been attended to the Waiting Room and needs to be removed, delete them from the Waiting Room as explained in the steps below. Patients are not removed by changing their Status in the Appointment Book. 

To remove a patient from the Waiting Room:

1. Go to Zedmed's Reception tab.
2. Select Waiting Room.
3. Double-click the patient to open their Attendance Details.
4. Select Delete.
5. Select Yes on the Confirm dialog. 
   The patient will be removed from the Waiting Room but will still be in the Appointment Book.