Capturing a patient's scheduling preferences helps your office offer ASAP and Recall appointments that best fit your patients' needs.  When filtering which patients you want to offer an open appointment to in Smart Fill, YAPI is able to read patients' preferences so you're not offering appointments that they can't take.  Read our instructions below to learn how to set patient scheduling preferences in POP.

Note: YAPI doesn't read patients' scheduling preferences from Dentrix, Open Dental, or Eaglesoft.  Likewise, setting preferences in POP does not change a patient's preferences in Dentrix, Open Dental, or Eaglesoft.

Table of Contents

• Setting Recall Scheduling Preferences
• Setting Scheduling Preferences for an Appointment on Your ASAP List
• Related Articles

 

Setting Recall Scheduling Preferences

YAPI uses a patient's general scheduling preferences to help you select the patients on your Recall Past Due list that are most likely to take an open appointment.  To set a patient's general scheduling preferences:

1. Log into the Practice Online Portal.

2. Click Patients in the left-hand menu:

   

3. Select Last Name, Email, or Phone and enter the patient's information in the Search field.  Then, hit Enter on your keyboard or click the magnifying glass icon:

   

4. In your search results, locate the patient and click their name:

   

5. On the patient's profile page, scroll to the bottom to find the Schedule Preferences (General) section. Any existing scheduling preferences for the patient are listed here. If the patient does not have any existing preferences saved, they are listed as "None."  Click Edit Preferences:

   

6. On the patient's Schedule Preferences page, click the sliders in the Daily Activity section to enable or disable specific days based on the patient's preferences:

   

7. For the remaining days, deselect the checkboxes  for Morning or Afternoon if a patient isn't available during those times:

   

8. In the Preferred Providers section, deselect the checkbox(es) of any provider(s) the patient doesn't prefer to see, leaving their preferred providers selected:

   

9. Click Save. When a popup shows that the patient's settings were saved successfully, click OK.

   

10. Optional: Scroll to the bottom of the patient's profile page and confirm that the details match the preferences you saved:

    

 

Setting Scheduling Preferences for an Appointment on Your ASAP List

When scheduling, if a patient indicated they wanted to be seen earlier if possible, you likely added them to the ASAP List in Dentrix, Open Dental, or Eaglesoft. You can also add scheduling preferences to these appointments in POP to help you select the patients on your ASAP List that are most likely to take an open appointment if one becomes available.

Tip: Patients can set their own preferences for an appointment when scheduling online by clicking Set Schedule Preferences just before confirming their appointment selection.  For more, see the Confirm Appointment section of our article Smart Scheduling - New Patient Walkthrough.

To set a patient's scheduling preferences for an existing appointment on your ASAP List:

1. Log into the Practice Online Portal.

2. Click Smart Fill in the left-hand menu:

   

3. On the Smart Fill page, click the name of the patient you want to edit scheduling preferences for:

   

4. On the patient's profile page, scroll to the bottom to find the Schedule Preferences (This Appointment) section. Any existing scheduling preferences for the patient are listed here. If the patient does not have any existing preferences saved, they are listed as "None."  Click Edit Preferences:
   

   

5. On the patient's Schedule Preferences page, click the sliders in the Daily Activity section to enable or disable specific days based on the patient's preferences. 

   

6. For the remaining days, deselect the checkboxes  for Morning or Afternoon if a patient isn't available during those times.

   

7. In the Preferred Date Ranges section, click the calendar icon below Earliest Date. In the calendar that pops up, select the earliest date that the patient is available.  Do the same under Latest Date, selecting the latest date the patient is available (usually the date of the appointment):

   

   Note: The Latest Date cannot fall after the date of the patient's existing appointment.

8. In the Preferred Providers section, deselect the checkbox(es) of any provider(s) the patient doesn't prefer to see, leaving their preferred providers selected:

   

9. Click Save. When a popup shows that the patient's settings were saved successfully, click OK.

   

10. Optional: Scroll to the bottom of the patient's profile page and confirm that the details match the preferences you saved:

    

Tip: If you or the patient have set scheduling preferences for an ASAP appointment, you can view these preferences on the Smart Fill screen by clicking the Schedule Preferences icon () on the row of the specific patient.

 

Related Articles

• Introduction to Smart Fill
• Using YAPI's ASAP List to Fill Last Minute Openings
• POP Patient Scheduling Preferences (Video)