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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.stratapt.com/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

Appointment types define the visit categories that appear on your schedule — Daily Visit, Initial Eval, Work Comp, Lunch, and any custom types your practice uses. Each type has configurable settings that control how it looks, how long it lasts, and how it behaves within scheduling automations. Appointment type settings live in the schedule legend: Schedule > Edit Settings (under the Legend on the schedule calendar).
Access: Editing appointment types is available to all staff members, but caution should be taken when making updates. Appointment types are universal to all staff at all clinics in the account, so settings should be left to what is universally acceptable.

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Global Schedule Settings

At the top of the Edit Settings interface are two practice-wide settings that apply to all appointment types:
  • Time increment — The number of minutes each block on the schedule represents (e.g., 15, 30, or 45 minutes)
  • Schedule hours — The global start and end time for the schedule calendar

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Per-Appointment Type Settings

Each appointment type has its own row in the Edit Settings interface with the following configurable fields:

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Color

Two color settings control the visual appearance of each appointment type on the calendar:
  • Text color — The color of the patient name and appointment details text
  • Box color — The background color of the appointment block
Choose combinations that are easy to read at a glance. Some text colors can be difficult to read on certain background colors, so test the pairing before saving.

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Duration

The default duration for this appointment type in minutes. This value pre-fills when scheduling a new appointment of this type but can be changed on a visit-by-visit basis.

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Encounter

Controls whether this appointment type is expected to generate billable charges. Set to Yes for clinical visit types (Initial Eval, Daily Visit, Re-Evaluation, etc.). Set to No for internal blocks that don’t involve patient treatment — lunch breaks, staff meetings, vacation holds, and similar non-clinical events. This setting affects reporting, task generation, and billing automations. Incorrect encounter settings on internal blocks can interfere with clean claim filing.
Set Encounter to No for all non-clinical appointment types. Internal blocks like lunch and vacation marked as encounters could generate unintentional tasks and affect billing reports. This is one of the most common configuration mistakes at go-live.

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Exclude Template Update

Relevant only for practices using Schedule Templates. When the nightly schedule template job runs, it clears any empty, non-excluded slots and replaces them with the template. Setting Exclude Template Update to Yes on an appointment type prevents the nightly job from overwriting blocks of that type — even if they have no patient assigned. Use this for lunch breaks, vacation holds, staff meetings, and any recurring non-patient block you want to protect from the nightly template rebuild.

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Plan of Care Eligible

When set to Yes, this appointment type is available for use in the Appointment Manager scheduling tool (in Early Access), which allows appointments to be booked as part of a patient’s prescribed treatment plan.

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Best Practices

  • Create “Available” types for schedule templates. For practices using Schedule Templates and the Appointment Manager, create neutral types like Available 30 and Available 60 to represent open slots. This gives the Appointment Manager visibility into bookable blocks and avoids tying templates to specific visit types.
  • Use consistent naming. Appointment type names control how StrataEMR routes documentation from the schedule. Types containing eval, progress, discharge, or plan in the name trigger the Clinical Documents routing. Name your evaluation and progress note types accordingly.