How to export your schedule from ModMed

Why specialty schedules need a better file

In a general practice, most open slots can be offered to most patients. Specialty schedules don't work that way. A procedure block, a new-patient consult and a quick post-op check are not interchangeable, and many slots can only go to patients of one provider, at one location, needing one kind of visit.

That makes the appointment export more important, not less. A useful ModMed file lets the front desk see, at a glance, which open slot matches which waiting or overdue patient. A file without appointment type and length forces staff to look each one up in the schedule, and that is usually where outreach stalls.

Three places appointment data lives

Practices using ModMed typically meet appointment data in three forms. Knowing which one you're looking at saves a lot of back and forth.

• The schedule itself, in ModMed PM. This is where appointments are booked, cancelled and moved. ModMed says the software flags cancelled appointments and suggests a waitlisted patient to fill the slot.
• ModMed Analytics. ModMed's reporting product. ModMed's own materials feature practices using it for A/R, financial and productivity reports. Ask your administrator whether an appointment-level report is available to you there.
• The EHI export. ModMed publishes a data dictionary for its EMA EHI (electronic health information) export, the kind of export certified health IT must support for patient record requests. It is comprehensive, but it isn't designed for a daily list of cancellations.

What to ask your administrator or ModMed support

Because ModMed's detailed help content is available only to clients and setups vary, this guide doesn't give a menu path. Instead, take this checklist to whoever manages ModMed for your practice, or to ModMed support:

1. Which report lists every appointment for a chosen date range, one appointment per row?
2. Does it include cancelled, no-show and rescheduled appointments, not just kept ones?
3. Does it show appointment type and length, provider, and location?
4. Does it include a patient account number and a mobile phone?
5. Can it be exported to Excel or CSV, and can the settings be saved for daily use?
6. Can free-text notes and visit reasons be left out?

The columns a specialty practice should keep

Beyond the basics of date, time, status and phone, these fields carry most of the weight in a specialty practice:

• Appointment type, at the category level: new patient, follow-up, procedure, post-op. This decides who can be offered a slot.
• Length, so a 15-minute opening isn't offered to a patient who needs 45.
• Provider, since specialty patients usually return to the same physician, and some visit types can only be done by certain providers.
• Location, for groups with several offices or a separate procedure site.
• Created date, if available. A no-show on an appointment booked months ago looks very different from one booked yesterday.

Worked example: an ophthalmology follow-up gap

The figures below are illustrative only. A three-provider ophthalmology practice exports the last 90 days. It finds 140 follow-up appointments that ended as no-shows or cancellations. Matching account numbers against future appointments, 72 of those patients have nothing booked.

The waitlist pop-up helped fill some of the cancelled slots on the day. It did nothing for the 72 patients themselves, because filling a slot with someone else doesn't bring the original patient back.

Say a follow-up visit at this practice is worth $160. Those 72 patients represent $11,520 of follow-up care that isn't on the calendar. If outreach rebooks 40 of them over the next month, that's $6,400, and 40 patients back in the care their physician planned for them.

The same export also shapes how the outreach is done. Sorting the 72 patients by provider shows that one physician accounts for nearly half of them, so that physician's open follow-up slots are offered first. Sorting by location shows which office has the most openings next week. And filtering by appointment length keeps short follow-up slots from being offered to patients who need a longer visit. None of this needs anything beyond the columns listed above, which is why getting them into the report the first time matters.

Before the file leaves the building

An appointment export from ModMed is protected health information. Save it only to a secured practice location. Remove note and reason columns, which in specialty practices often name a diagnosis or procedure. Send it only to a vendor that has signed a Business Associate Agreement, through that vendor's secure upload, and delete the local copy afterward. Then run it again tomorrow the same way: a daily file of the past week and the next few weeks is what keeps openings from going to waste.