Appointment Type Restrictions

If you decide to map your EMR Appointment Types to your Ocean Appointment Types, you will have access to appointment specific restrictions. These powerful restrictions allow you to customize the number of each type of appointment that can be booked on each day of the week, the frequency in which a patient can book each appointment type, and even restrict booking to only certain slots in your EMR schedule. These can be used individually, or you can combine their functionality.

Only book in time slots with the following [EMR term] applied

Using this restriction will allow you to set specific time slots, appointment suggestions or template slots in your EMR schedule that will only accept bookings of a certain appointment type. This is helpful if you have a type of appointment that should only be available for patients to book at a certain time of day, such as limiting only “Mental Health” appointments to be booked from 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM on Mondays and Wednesdays.

For a step-by-step guide on how to use this restriction, please see how to restrict the types of appointments that can be booked into a certain time slot. 

Book a maximum of [##] visits per day on [day of the week]

Using this restriction will allow you to limit the number of appointments of this type that are booked on a particular day. To add more days, click the Add Restriction button. For example, you may choose to only allow 5 “Virtual Visits” on Mondays.

Appointments of this type must be at least [##] days apart

Using this restriction will allow you to enforce a frequency at which patients can book appointments of this type by specifying the number of days that must elapse between each appointment. For example, you could apply this restriction to a “Physical” appointment type and prevent patients from booking another “Physical” appointment within 365 days.

Prevent patients from booking another appointment of this type until their upcoming appointment occurs

Using this restriction will allow you to prevent patients from booking subsequent appointments of this type until their upcoming appointment of this type occurs. When this restriction is enabled and a patient attempts to book an appointment of this type while having a future appointment of the same type already booked, the patient is blocked from proceeding. A message will be presented to the patient stating: "You have an existing appointment scheduled. Please wait until the existing appointment has elapsed, prior to booking another."