PnC introduced a new feature, Appointment Presence, as part of their August 2023 update. This version is live in the UW-Madison system beginning 8/25/23.

In past versions, a Visit Type could be designated as solely an in-person visit, or a telehealth visit. All appointments scheduled as that Visit Type would fall in the specified category.
With this new feature, Visit Types can continue to be solely one or the other, or, can be specified as "hybrid", meaning an appointment scheduled with a hybrid Visit Type can be either in-person or virtual, depending on the situation.

Key Terms:

Appointment Presence - This will be the method of the appointment. There are two options; In-person or Televisit
Location - While this concept has existed, in this new version, Location is more synonymous with where the provider will be at the time of the appointment, NOT the location of the appointment

Action Items:

- To add the Televisit Appointment Icon shown in the PncScheudle View section, select your name in the top blue toolbar > Preferences > Toggle on the "Televist" icon

Check-in Workflows:

--Check-in for televisit appointments will remain the same

--Check-in for in-person appointments may differ, depending on the method

--Checking-in via iPad will remain the same

--For areas without iPad check-in but a front desk presence, such as 7th floor, MPAs will Arrive the appointment in PnC when the patient presents at the front desk. This will enable the patient to complete check-in on their personal device

--For areas without iPad check-in or a front desk presence, such as on-campus embedded providers, the provider will need to Arrive the patient by right-clicking the appointment and selecting "Arrived". We suggest providers in these areas Arrive all their in-person appointments for the day each morning. This will allow the patient to check-in on their personal device when they're ready

*Note that in the case of a same-day cancel or no-show in this situation, the appointment status will need to be reset to "Appointment Made", before it can be flagged as Canceled or a No-Show. Resetting the appointment status is done by right-clicking on the appointment, selecting "Reset appt status", and choosing the desired status

Main Takeaways:

--For those working in the Counseling Department, this will apply more directly because you will be utilizing the new hybrid Visit Type feature. In most other departments, there are distinct Visit Types for telehealth and in-person appointments, which will continue to be used

--Question: What Location should be used for televisit appointments, Remote or Zoom Telehealth?:

The plan is to phase out the “Zoom Telehealth” location shortly, which will be replaced by “Remote”

Our reasoning behind this is twofold:

1. 1. The Location (both on the schedule template and appointment locations) is now more synonymous with where the provider is physically located for the day. We thought Remote was more intuitive as a Location than Zoom Telehealth
   2. Because of how common the use of Zoom Telehealth was in the past, we thought it would help avoid confusion to start fresh with all these new changes, instead of trying to rework the concept of what Zoom Telehealth meant for scheduling

So, please begin using Remote, as this is the long term plan.

--The indicator as to whether a visit is in-person or telehealth will be the Appointment Presence. For hybrid Visit Types, the toggle will be in the Appointment Edit window. For non-hybrid Visit Types, it will automatically be scheduled to match the setting on the Visit Type (either in-person or telehealth)

--Find openings has an additional parameter for Appointment Presence. This will default to in-person. If you are wanting to search for telehealth openings, you will need to make that selection before searching for openings

How this looks in the system:

*Note that screenshots are from a training environment and some aspects, like the Appointment Presence of a Visit Type, may not reflect Production*

Appointment Edit Screen

--If the Visit Type is setup on the back end to be hybrid, you will see this checkbox in the Appointment Edit window where you can toggle between a televisit or in-person appointment

--If the Visit Type is strictly televisit, you see that designation in the Appointment Edit window without an option to toggle it

--If the Visit Type is strictly in-person, you won't see anything different in the Appointment Edit window

PncSchedule View

--The Appointment Presence for the appointment will be added in the left sidebar when an appointment has been selected

• If the Presence is In-Person, you will also see the location of the appointment. If the Presence is Televisit, you will see the patient's timezone

-- There is a new appointment icon that will display a camera if the appointment is televisit

*This will not display by default, you must enable it by taking the steps listed in the Action Items section at the top of the document

For Patients in MyUHS

--For in-person appointments, it will list the location of the appointment

--For televisit appointments, it will tell the patient the visit will be online, no matter what the location is in PnC

Schedule Templates

With this new feature indicating how the appointment will take place, there needed to be an update to how schedule templates are built. Appointment Presence will now be a characteristic of schedule templates, as well.
There are three options:

-In-person - Used when the provider will only be seeing patients in person. The most likely scenario is when the provider is in their office for the day and won't be seeing televisit appointments  
-Televisit - Used when the provider is only hosting virtual appointments. This will be the case when the provider is working remotely that day
-Any (either in-person or televisit) - Used when the provider can be scheduled for either in-person or televisit appointments. This will be the case if the provider is in their office, but is also able to take televisit appointments that day

This attribute can be changed just like any of the others when creating a schedule template

Find Openings

The Find Openings tool now includes a parameter for Appointment Presence. It can only be set to In-Person or Televisit, meaning you cannot currently search for both kinds of openings at the same time (we plan to discuss this with PnC as an enhancement opportunity)

- If a slot on the provider schedule is listed as Any in the schedule template, it will be returned in both the In-Person and Televisit searches