Build schedule

Build schedule drafts sessions for you to review. It is a rule-based optimizer, not AI: the same availability and choices always give the same draft, and every session says why it was proposed. A draft is private to the people who manage appointments: nothing is booked, shown on calendars or in the family portal, or reminded until you publish, and every session you publish goes through the same booking checks as one you book by hand. It works for every discipline.

Open Schedule > Build schedule. You need permission to manage appointments.

Build a schedule#

1. Click Build Schedule.
2. Pick the Week starting date, how many Weeks to draft (one to four), the Appointment type to book and the Session length (minutes).
3. If the appointment type serves every discipline, pick the Discipline to draft.
4. Choose what to favor: Most hours gives each session to the free provider with the fewest hours taken so far, Least driving to the free provider whose previous stop that day (or default location) is nearest.
5. Leave Patients empty to draft every active patient with an open episode in the discipline and availability on file (up to 60), or pick some.
6. To tell drafts apart, turn on Name it or keep it as a what-if and enter a Draft name.
7. Click Build Draft.

How the optimizer decides#

NeatPractice works week by week. It fills each patient's weekly availability, less what is already booked that week, with sessions inside the providers' working hours less their bookings. For each session:

• Only providers of the discipline who work at that place and time are considered, and moving between places leaves a short travel gap.
• Providers on the patient's care team in the staffing role go first; the rest are ranked by what you chose to favor.
• The top choices are run through the booking checks without booking anything: credentials, authorizations, scheduling limits and restriction rules, booking windows, payer enrollment and the rest. A provider the checks refuse gives way to the next one. The checks count the sessions the draft already placed, so a weekly or monthly scheduling limit, or an authorization's weekly or daily limit, stops the draft at build time instead of at publish.
• Once the patient's authorization has no units or visits left for another session, the patient's remaining windows wait.

A window marked Home books at the patient's home address. Only windows in effect at the session's location count: one held to another location, or whose dates have ended or not yet started, is left out.

A window the optimizer could not fill shows as a No cover found row whose Why column says what blocked it: no provider works then, everyone free is booked, the booking check that refused it, or the authorization ran out.

Cover a callout#

When a provider calls out, click Cover Callout, pick the Provider and the First day and Last day, and click Build Draft. For each of their sessions in those days, NeatPractice looks for a free provider of the same discipline: someone on the patient's care team first, then anyone who treated the patient, then the nearest. Each cover runs through the booking checks as if the original session were already freed. Sessions nobody can take show No cover found with the reason.

Review and adjust#

Click a draft to open it. The header shows the Coverage: the share of wanted hours the draft placed.

• Provider utilization lists each provider's working hours in the draft's days beside the hours already booked and the hours still drafted, so you can see who is overloaded and who has room. Time off is taken out of the working hours. It updates as you adjust.
• Sessions lists every drafted session with the patient, provider, time and why.

To change a session, open its row menu and click Adjust. Pick another Provider, Day, Starts or Ends and click Save. NeatPractice runs the booking checks on the change at once and notes in Why whether it would book, counting the draft's other sessions too. Adjusting a No cover found row with a provider makes it a proposed session.

To add a session the optimizer did not place, click Add Session above the sessions, pick the Patient, Provider, Day, Starts and Ends, and click Add. It uses the draft's appointment type and location (else the patient's own), and its Why notes what the booking checks said.

Publish all or part of a draft#

Tick the sessions to keep, or click Select to add all open sessions or those of one patient, provider or day. Then click Publish Selected. Each one books like a new appointment; one the booking checks refuse is marked Refused by checks with the reason, and the others still book. Publishing a callout session books the cover provider with the same patients and codes and cancels the original session for the clinic.

Click Leave Out to drop the selected sessions. Sessions you neither publish nor leave out stay in the draft, so you can publish more later. The draft is done once every session is published or left out. Click Discard to set a draft aside; what it already published stays booked.