Arriving patients into your practice helps keep everything on track, assisting you in checking if patients have completed their forms online via Patient Portal or you need to assign them a Clinipad or other while they wait to be seen.

It is also crucial in communicating within the practice as to the stage of a patient in their journey through your practice, EXACT identifies these stages using a number of appointment status icons.

This article covers how to arrive a patient into the practice.

• Arriving a patient
• Accessing the arrivals/action required menu after arriving a patient 
• Troubleshooting

Arriving a patient

The image below is an example of the arrivals screen when a patient is marked as arrived.

1. When the patient (or family) arrives, accept them into the practice by clicking the check box in the Appointment Book.
   
2. The Arrival screen displays for that patient or family.
3. If you use Patient Portal, check that the pre-appointment forms have been completed (Patient Portal - Checking Form Completion Status). You can also resend some forms to Clinipad by clicking "Arrive and send to Clinipad" or alternatively, Print them.
   
   Click the blue hyperlinks to print out Forms for patient signature, with the exception of the Contact Consent hyperlink - this opens a window where you digitally record patient permissions.
   

   Important: By asking for the patient's consent to send them communications you ensure that the practice complies with strict regulations around patient data collection and management.

   For this reason EXACT may prompt you to collect Contact Consent at both patient arrival and patient departure.
   

   Tip: Your performance in securing Contact Consent is tracked in an Appointment Workflow Compliance Report and in Contact Consent Preferences Audit.

   For each topic displayed in the Preferences to contact patient window, ask for the patient's consent and click the appropriate button:
   
4. When the patient has completed all forms/you have completed all tasks, ask the patient to wait to be called to the surgery, click the Arrive button if not using Clinipad at the bottom of the window.
   
5. A ‘stick figure’ will then display in the appointment book to indicate the patient has arrived for their appointment.
   
6. This step is important for the Appointment Workflow, which tracks patients through the practice by means of sequential appointment status.
   
   When you click the Arrive button, EXACT understands that the patient is now in a queue waiting for their Provider, and displays this status to the Provider in the Patient desktop, as an icon at the Arrivals Door.
   
7. The Arrivals Door is a critical element in the Appointment Workflow, through which a practice tracks and controls the journey of each patient appointment through the practice. It is particularly pertinent to the Clinician role in the Appointment Workflow.

Accessing the arrivals/action required menu after arriving a patient

You can access the Action required list containing the Patient Details, Medical History etc after arriving a patient and closing the window.

1. You must have arrived the patient and closed the Action required to gain access to this window.
2. Double-click on the appointment.
3. Click the Action Required button.
4. You can also right-click then select Action Required from the drop-down menu.

Troubleshooting

If the logged in user cannot see the stickman waiting at the top of the patients file screen check the below:

• Check that the provider who the patients appointment is booked in with is the user that's currently logged in as only that provider will see the stickman appear. 
• Check the screen resolution on the Dentists screen. If it's 1024*768 then it's too small to see the Patient Door and the Stickmen. The screen resolution will need to be increased - or alternatively, it's possible to remove the extra buttons if your resolution cannot be improved.
• If your appointment book is using Rooms. Check that the patients appointment and provider are set to that room at the same date/time.
• Make sure that the appointment shows as arrived for the provider on the appointment book too, this will confirm that the user is not logged into a Backup/Demo.
• Check the computers date/time.