Patient Status

A patient’s “status” refers to the position of the patient in a hierarchy of stages, or steps, that occur between arrival at the office and their departure. Their “status” is the step to which the patient has progressed through their current appointment. The following information applies to ChiroTouch Premium.

Arrived

The patient is assigned an “arrived” status when they successfully complete self check-in through the CT Sign-In application.

Checked In

The patient waits to be checked into an exam room and be seen by the doctor. There are several ways to change this patient’s status from “arrived” to “checked in” using CT Provider:

• Clicking the “Next” button on the toolbar;
• Clicking the Patient Status Bar in the toolbar;
• Adding a diagnosis;
• Adding a service or regular charge.

Direct Check-In

Your office may prefer to check their patients into a room immediately after they arrive at the office. If needed, you may circumvent the “arrived” status and move the patient directly to the “checked in” status. In ChiroTouch Premium, there are several ways to directly assign a “checked in” status:

• In CT Sign-In, select the option to check-in a patient into a room immediately after the patient uses the program in the "Room Assignment" section of the Control Panel
• In CT Provider, add a service or regular charge and the patient has not yet been marked as “arrived”
• In CT Provider, add a diagnosis and the patient has not yet been marked as “arrived”
• In CT Provider, click the “Next” button on the toolbar (The CT Provider application must be configured to wait for patients to sign in)

Returning a “Checked In” Status to an “Arrived” Status

You may return a patient to an “arrived” status once the patient has been checked in. In ChiroTouch Premium, there is only one way to return the patient’s status from “checked in” to “arrived”:

• In CT Provider, when the doctor clicks the “Return” button in the toolbar and there are no new diagnoses and/or charges posted to the account. Even if the charges added are patient charges, which do not require an appointment, all charges must be removed once the patient’s status changes to “checked in”.

Done

After the patient has been assigned a “checked in” status, the next step would be to change the patient’s status to “checked out”. However, you have the option to assign an intermediate status of “done”. The doctor assigns the patient’s status to “done” after completing predefined steps in documenting the patient’s visit. The patient status remains "Done" until the front desk checks out the patient.

“Done” is more than a change in status. It is a virtual room where the doctor sends the patient when that patient should be leaving the exam room to check out with the front desk. The doctor is telling the system that he or she is done with the patient and the patient should no longer be in the exam room and should be heading to the front desk. It is a visual indicator for the front desk staff, who use this information to prepare themselves to check out the patient.

Auto DONE

This feature in CT Provider allows you to choose certain tasks which, after they are completed, automatically move the patient to a virtual “Done” room when the doctor clicks the "Delete Patient" button, the "Next Patient" button, the "Return Patient" button, the "Date Control" button, or the "Select Patient" button. It alerts office personnel that you are done seeing the patient and that the patient is on their way to the front desk to check out. In the CT Announcer application, the patient is removed from the room list.

What happens if I don’t use the Auto DONE feature?

If you choose to not use the Auto DONE feature, you may still use all applications in ChiroTouch Premium effectively. Your front desk wont have this visual indicator that the patient is done with the appointment. Likewise, you wont be prompted by the CT Announcer application to remove the patient from the rooms list. The patient’s status remains “checked in” until the front desk updates the status to “checked out”.

Checked Out

The patient’s status is changed to “checked out” by the front desk. This is the last step of the patient’s appointment, and it tells the system that the patient has completed all appointment transactions with the doctor and front desk. The patient may not have necessarily left the office, but the appointment is considered concluded. In ChiroTouch Premium, there is no way to assign this status to a patient. The only way to change the status to “checked out” is through the Front Desk application of ChiroTouch.