ADDING MORE PROVIDERS

There are 2 ways to add Providers or practitioners to the system. Add a new business for the new Provider, or add the Provider to the existing business. If the Provider is keeping all financial information separate, then you will want to open a new business. If you want to track the production separately for each Provider, but the new Provider is not managing his own business, then simply add him to the existing business. This last method is especially useful when adding an associate or a therapist that will be billing under your name and carrier numbers.

Click on the Open File Folder on the tool bar, then click on Doctor Information to open the Doctor Master Entry. Each Provider can be set up to be their own business. For more information on this, see the How To #04 Adding an Additional Business. To add additional Providers, click on the "+" plus sign on the tool bar at the top of your screen.

Fill in the social security number, name, home address and home phone number for the Provider. Date Started is the date that this Provider started with your clinic. Terminated will be filled if this Provider leaves your clinic. Fill in each of the ID numbers that will be used by this Provider.

Billing Dr # defaults to this Provider being their own billing Provider. If, you have an associate Provider who will be billing under the main Provider’s name and ID, choose the main Provider as the billing Provider. If you wish to have fee slips printed for this Provider, click in this field. If you wish to use the Duplicate SOAP Notes entry that duplicates the last SOAP note to the new date, click on this field.

Setup the Column(s) that will be used by this Provider by clicking on the Schedule Columns for this Provider tab. Click [Add new Column] to enter additional columns. You may Name these columns in any way that works for your office. It will default to the column number and the Display Name of the Provider.

Should you wish to do so, you have the ability to setup a specific service for a specific column. In scheduling new appointments, the system takes the default Service-activity for the column, that has been entered on the Provider screen. Every new appointment in a column gets the default activity for that column. (Note: You may change the default appointment on the scheduling screen if needed, just would be the suggested service if no other is selected).

You may also “Group” columns together. When creating multiple appointments, TPS2000 will search for the time and specific column designated for each appointment. If you have more than 1 column in which this appointment could be placed (i.e. Dr. Greenwood has 2 columns available for general office visits and 2 additional columns for therapies), then you may group these together. In this way, when you are creating multiple appointments, the system will check each column in the group for an available time before it returns a conflict.

You may also activate a feature that will assist with cluster booking (booking several patients for the same time period). You will use the [Edit Time Grouping] feature when you don’t want to schedule patients at precise time (e.g. 5 minute intervals), but want to schedule them so that they can come anywhere within a certain time period.

In the Group Code column, designate the time grouping in which the ‘true’ appointment time falls (see the above example).

You may also place a check mark in the “Don’t show NORMAL time on Schedule, ONLY show the Time Group Code. If you do this, then your scheduler will show only the Group Code. For example, If you have 3 columns for this provider and the appointment duration is set to 10 minute intervals (8:00am, 8:10am, 8:20am) a check mark in this box will display your schedule as 8AM, 8AM, 8AM.

To set up your Provider's schedule, click on Schedule Time Availability then fill in the hours worked by this Provider. If there is no break scheduled for a particular day, leave the Break Start and the Break End time slots blank. Once you have setup your appointment times, click on Apply Schedule to ALL Columns/Units for this Provider. In the Apply this Schedule from and to you will see 2 small calendars. In the first calendar for the from click and bring up the dates, you may click on TODAY or pick the date from which you wish to schedule to start (NOTE: we suggest you start from either TODAY or the first of the month). Now click on the calendar in the To slot and choose the ending date for the arrangement (Note: we suggest you pick at least a year for this field). Now click on Apply this Schedule.

If a Provider leaves the clinic, that Provider can be removed from active service on the system, to do this, you would Deactivate them. Should that Provider come back, you can simply Reactivate him. To reactivate a Provider simply re-attach him to the appropriate business.

You will now need to be sure that this Provider has been setup with the “right” to deliver services. In the Service Master List go to each of the services that this Provider will provide and in the Providers box, Highlight this Provider’s name. Do this by holding down the CTRL key and click on this Providers. If the person never does this service, do not highlight them. Services not highlighted will not appear for that Provider when processing services.