How to export your schedule from eClinicalWorks

Know who owns reporting in your office

In many eClinicalWorks practices, one person, often a practice administrator, an office manager or an outside consultant, set up the reports everyone uses. Before you go hunting through menus, ask that person two questions: which report do we use to see appointments for a date range, and can it be exported to Excel or CSV?

That conversation saves time because eClinicalWorks' public website describes its products but most step-by-step documentation lives in client-only help resources. We don't publish a menu path we can't verify for your version. Your administrator, the eClinicalWorks client help resources, or eClinicalWorks support can give you the exact steps.

Where eBO fits

eClinicalWorks markets eBO, the eClinicalWorks Business Optimizer, as its reporting and analytics suite. According to eClinicalWorks, eBO provides canned reports, custom report writing and dashboards, and its administrative reporting covers areas including appointments, visit analysis and productivity. eClinicalWorks also says eBO reports can be scheduled and delivered by email.

If your practice has eBO, it is a natural place to build an appointment report that runs the same way every day. If it doesn't, the scheduling side of eClinicalWorks may still offer an appointment list you can export; ask your administrator.

The columns to ask for

Whichever report you end up using, the file should contain these columns. Use this list when you talk with your administrator or eClinicalWorks support:

• Appointment date and start time, plus duration if available.
• Provider or resource, since eClinicalWorks schedules can include non-provider resources such as rooms or equipment.
• Facility, for multi-location practices.
• Visit status, including cancelled, no-show and rescheduled.
• Visit type, at the category level, such as new patient, follow-up or annual visit.
• Patient account number and mobile phone.
• Leave out visit reasons typed as free text, which can contain clinical details. The task doesn't need them.

A caution about emailed reports

Scheduled reports delivered by email are convenient. They are also a common way for patient data to end up in places it shouldn't: forwarded threads, personal inboxes on phones, or mailboxes that are never cleaned out.

If you use scheduled delivery, make sure the destination mailbox is a secured practice account, not a personal one, that your email is set up for encryption, and that someone deletes old report emails on a schedule. Better still, have the file saved to a secure practice location and uploaded from there. Either way, only send it to an outside vendor that has signed a Business Associate Agreement, through that vendor's secure upload.

Illustrative math for a busy primary care office

These numbers are illustrative. A five-provider primary care office runs an appointment report for the past month. It shows 1,900 scheduled visits, 120 no-shows and 150 cancellations. Of the no-shows, 80 have no future appointment.

Say an average visit is worth $125. Those 80 patients represent $10,000 of visits that didn't happen and haven't been rebooked. Many of them are patients with ongoing conditions who need follow-up. If outreach brings back half of them, that's $5,000 recovered, and a meaningful number of patients back in care. The report also shows which providers and which time slots have the most no-shows, which helps the office decide where to concentrate reminders.

Matching an opening to the right patient

An open slot in an eClinicalWorks schedule belongs to a specific provider, at a specific facility, with a visit length that may only suit certain visit types. Before offering it to anyone, check three things in the export:

• Same provider or an approved substitute. Patients in ongoing care usually want to see their own provider. Ask your providers which visit types colleagues can cover.
• Right facility. In a multi-site practice, a patient who no-showed at one location may not travel to another. Keep facility on every row.
• Right length. A 15-minute opening suits a quick follow-up, not a new-patient visit. Use the duration column, or the gap between appointments, to match visit types to slots.

Your first-week checklist

1. Ask your administrator which report lists appointments with status for a date range, and whether it exports to Excel or CSV.
2. Run it for the last 90 days and the next 30.
3. Confirm cancelled and no-show statuses appear, and that every row has a date and time.
4. Remove free-text reason and note columns.
5. Save the report settings, or have eBO schedule it, so it runs the same way daily.
6. Upload securely to a vendor under a Business Associate Agreement and delete local copies.