Changing recurring appointments?

What we did was end date the reoccurring appointment and then set up a new reoccurring appointment this preserves the previous appointment records. We trained staff to only use change for a single reoccurring appointment. ( I thin k it is just this one as the choice

I have asked a therapist that can describe the problem a little better to type on my behalf.

When a recurrence is entered it is set from the beginning to end date or the number of weeks. Let's take for example that we enter a client to begin a recurrence weekly on December 1 through January 26. The recurrence is set for that period but the therapist and client agree not to bee next week on December 29th. They delete the appointment and it disappears. January 5th, the client returns and says that they are all good and won't need the rest of the appointments or maybe they are not all good but can't meet at 8 am anymore. The recurrence is then ended on January 5 and a new one is entered. This requires a "change all appointments" or delete each one into the future by hand. This is a time consuming effort if one has a DBT client you're scheduled out for a year. So, "change all" is used. What that does, however, is that it repopulates all the deleted appointments so that when one goes back to December 29th as the example, it's back on the schedule.

When the 1300 report is run, it shows up as an appointment without a service line. Normally, it's not a big deal for an individual to go back and clean up their report, but for an agency to run 1300 reports it becomes overwhelming and when therapists receive the report to clean up the appointments, it becomes a process that then points out a "gliche in the matrix" if you will. There are other ways the function acts up. For example...

When you change all to end a recurrence, if you have a client that you changed one single appointment "this one only" to another time without having used the "rescheduled" feature, one ends up moving that appointment to the original recurrence time slot showing a double booking or an erroneous appointment that no longer coincides with the times for billing. That's more a nuisance than a really huge problem - unless you're getting audited from the bottom up. I think it's an easy one to respond to but it's another example of how the feature impacts previous appointments.

Has anyone figured out how to get around that gliche or is it something that needs to be taken to another level to develop a potential fix to the gliche? Maybe, there is a reason for the program to work this way? Maybe there is a potential fix to add commands that only delete appointments in the future and not change appointments in the past deleted or not? There might be logic to it - who knows - but then again, it might just be a gliche.

Respectfully, submitted.

I was not clear enough here are our steps - we have been doing it this way for several years and it works pretty well but I agree we always thought this needed a better solution then our workaround

RULESfor changing or rescheduling reoccurring appointment

1. NEVER move a reoccurring appointment

Instead on the reoccurrence tab delete the number of weeks and add an END date.

2.select CHANGE ALL APPOINTMENTS ** this is the ONLY TIME you would use this selection

3. This will delete all future appointments for that reoccurrence but NOT the pass appointment record/

4 Create a NEW reoccurring appointment NEVER CHANGE just END steps 1-3 going forward

5. EXCEPTION Current Reoccurrence appointment in system that you have changed in past : If you have already moved the reoccurrence appointment at some previous time when you make this change(END reoccurrence) all previous records of appointments will move to the original occurrence day of the week.

Example:

Client A original reoccurrence appointment created March 1 every Monday at 10 am.

On April 1 you changed (moved) the reoccurrence to every Tuesday – you lost the record of all Monday appointments for March 1- 31 but did have appointments correct for April

ON May 1you END reoccurrence with END date and save ALL Appointments.

All appointments created between April 1- April 30 scheduled for Tuesday at 12 will revert back to original reoccurrence of Monday at 10. Creating an inaccurate record of previous appointments for April (however this will NOT affect the billing Service lines entered)

Reschedule Just a single appointmentclick for THIS ONE ONLY

Has this problem been fixed yet? From my experience it appears that it is still an issue and I'm quite disappointed that Procentive has not fixed it in 2 years. I have a recurring appointment that I need to delete because it is several months out. If I do the "Change All Appointments" my understanding (and from a previous experience that was a nightmare) it will change all the appointments I've had with this client. I am required to go back and make them match the session date/time.

Hello Mike.  Here is a link to our Knowledge Hub article that addresses the correct way to make this change:  End a Recurring Appointment.  As mentioned above, you do not want to delete the appointment, but rather change the end date of the recurrence.  Thanks!

Unfortunately, when following the instructions mentioned, it changes past appointments in addition to removing future ones.  For example if you had a recurring appointment and at any time in the past had altered one or more of those appointments, when clicking "change all" it reverts those past modified appointments to whatever the original appointment was rather than leaving those modifications alone.

Missy,

Thank you for your response. Bobbi did a better job explaining my experience. Could you please ask the developers to fix this as soon as possible?

Hello Mike and Bobbi, I'm sorry but I am still not exactly sure what is happening and it now sounds like we may be talking about different scenarios. To clarify what I was saying, if you are ending a recurring meeting you should only be changing the end date.  That scenario I just tested and it is working correctly.  If you are making other changes to the recurring meeting at the same time, or if you are talking about changing the recurrence multiple times, that is different and different scenarios are going to produce different results.

If something is not working correctly we want to get that fixed for you.  If you would be willing to provide details in a Support Ticket, we can look into this further.  A ticket is the best place for us to communicate the specifics about what is happening. Thank you! 

It works the way it has always worked but people need to know that if you follow the instructions for ending a recurrence and use the "change all" option, you will alter past appointments of that recurrence that may have been changed. 

Example, Sirius Black has a recurring appointment every Wednesday at 2pm. 2 months ago Sirius had a conflict with that date/time and his counselor changed his appointment to Thursday at 1pm, for just that week, by using the "change this one only" option in the appointment.  Fast forward to this week, Sirius no longer needs to be seen but has several appointments still left in the recurrence.  Staff member Bugs Bunny follows the instructions on how to end a recurring appointment early and changes the end date of the recurrence to today and chooses the "change all appointments" option, that appointment 2 months ago will now go back to Wednesday at 2pm instead of where it was moved to.

Yes! Exactly this! I have tried to avoid recurring appointments as much as possible since this always becomes an issue. Someone invariably has an every-Thursday appointment and they land on Thanksgiving. We move the Thanksgiving appointment and continue as usual until they they need to end the recurrence for some reason. Once we end the recurrence and "change all appointments", the Thanksgiving appointment reappears and our documentation/billing no longer match the schedule. Not to mention the now resurrected Thanksgiving appointment shows up on my 1300 report even though it was already billed according to the previously modified schedule.

Nicely explained ladies! And, YES, this is a problem. Especially because mental health appointments are almost always recurring. There needs to be a save changes option for just FUTURE appointments.

Yes! That would be perfect - only changing future appointments! :)