The following information will help users understand how to configure the Front Desk Appointment Book to calculate accurate practitioner utilisation rates using the Insights Dashboard.
Front Desk Insights Dashboard is an advanced reporting tool that allows you to monitor the health of your business using customisable widgets such as graphs, tables and KPIs. This application is available to Front Desk users at no cost and provides live business intelligence information, offering flexible feedback on day-to-day business operations. The Insights Dashboard user guide can be found here.
1. Review your appointment book rules
The utilisation widgets leverage off the existing appointment book rules functionality in Front Desk to determine what is considered available/unavailable time. Many users, especially those using the Patient Booking Gateway, will already be using rules as described below.
To review your appointment book rules, go to: File > System Information > Appointment Book > Rules
The ‘App’ column indicates rules that staff can make manual appointments in this period.
The ‘Sch’ column indicates the rule is available for Scheduler/Waiting List/Booking Gateway.
To edit these settings, double-click on the rule and tick the boxes appropriately.
At times where there are no rules, all appointment book slots will be considered available for manual appointments and the scheduler. If you do not use appointment book rules and use rule outs to set boundaries for availability, read on below to see how rule outs are handled by the utilisation widgets.
2. Defining available time
Once your appointment book rules have been reviewed, we can start adding utilisation widgets. Select the + icon in the top right of the Insights Dashboard and select one of the utilisation widgets.
As Front Desk Appointment Book availability is defined differently from practice to practice, the utilisation widgets have been designed to accommodate a wide range of appointment book configurations. Utilisation widgets have the following filters:
The ‘time available for utilisation’ filter specifies how available time is defined on the appointment book.
Rules available for scheduler
Available time is specified by rules that are only available for the scheduler. Users of the Patient Booking Gateway should already have their rules configured in this way.
Rules available for manual appointments
Available time is specified by rules only permitting manual appointments.
Rules available for scheduler and manual appointments
Available time is specified by rules available for both scheduler and manual appointments.
3. Choosing how rule outs affect utilisation
The ‘rule outs’ filter lets users choose how rule-outs should be considered.
Reduce the total time available for utilisation
This option is also ideal for practices that don’t use appointment book rules and generally mark unavailability with rule outs.
Include as utilised time
Rule outs will contribute as utilised time.
Include as unutilised time
Rule outs will not contribute as utilised time.
4. What should contribute to utilised time?
With available time and the rule outs now defined, users can choose what should contribute to utilised time. Appointments, group appointments and casual appointments will contribute as utilised time by default. Users also have the choice of including empty group appointments as utilised time, as well as only focusing on appointments in a practitioner’s first column.
Further, where available time is defined as ‘rules available for scheduler’, users can also choose to have appointments that are booked in ‘manual appointments only’ areas to contribute to utilised time (shown below). With this option selected, if all rules ‘available for the scheduler’ are completely filled with appointments, utilisation rates can exceed 100%.
5. Using Reporting Groups
Reporting Groups are a great way to group practitioners outside of Practice Groups for reporting purposes. For example, they can be used to consolidate files for a practitioner working at multiple locations, or for all practitioners of a particular profession. Reporting Groups can be set up in Front Desk from File > System Information > Groups.
Due to the complexity of providing utilisation information in a timely manner, utilisation rates are calculated using a data warehousing technique, as a background process, once a day. To view the last time utilisation rates were calculated, hover over the information tooltip in the top right of the widget.
