Completing Scheduled Appointments
Last Modified: Mar 18, 2024
Overview
Staff users can complete appointments by submitting an Appointment Summary Report which records the basic appointment details as well as objective appointment outcomes.
Any information you enter into the platform pertaining to a student becomes a part of their official student record and may be subpoenaed, as outlined in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
Appointment Summary Reports are not visible to students so any action items for the student should be communicated separately.
Appointment Summaries are visible to all advisors on campus in an effort to provide contextual information for future appointments.
Finding Scheduled Appointments
Scheduled appointments can be found on the Staff Home in the Appointments tab.
Upcoming/Current Appointments
Within the Appointments tab there is a section for Upcoming Appointments, listing the appointment details.
For any upcoming appointment, staff can select the appropriate checkbox on the appointment row and use the actions menu to complete certain tasks.
The most common actions for appointments would be Add Appointment Summary and Cancel Appointment.
Recent Appointments
Any appointments that are in the past 90 days will be shown in the Recent Appointments tab under the Reporting section.
Recent appointments should still be completed with an appointment summary, or marked as a no-show if appropriate. Appointments that truly never happened are are not considered a no-show should be cancelled to properly classify them as having never happened.
Appointments that are considered completed will show with a Report Filed status in green, indicating that either the appointment has Report Details associated or the appointment was a No-Show. If an appointment has no report, the Report Filed field will shows as Not Yet.
For any recent appointment without a report already filed, staff can select the appropriate checkbox on the appointment row and use the actions menu to complete certain tasks.
The most common actions for appointments would be Add Appointment Summary and Mark No-Show.
Adding Appointment Summary
With a single row checked (or multiple for group appointments), click on the Actions menu and select the Add Appointment Summary option.
A new overlay window will open with most appointment details pre-filled and space to include appointment summary information.
Appointment Details
The left column of the overlay lists the appointment day/time, care unit, location, service, course (if applicable), meeting type, date of visit, meeting start/end time, staff and student info, check in/out datetime, and a suggested follow-up date/time
Some of these fields can be changed, if needed, to properly reflect the actual details for the appointment. For example, if the student scheduled the appointment for one service, but in reality they intended to have the appointment for a different reason, the service reason on the appointment summary could be updated to reflect this change.
Summary Details
The summary details section has several short response text boxes and Yes/No/NA questions that may or may not be applicable to the appointment.
If these predefined prompts are not applicable or are too generic for the appointment, it is perfectly acceptable to leave them blank.
Appointment Summary
The Appointment Summary section is a free-response text field where staff can enter any and all objective notes about the appointment. This can include but is not limited to: topics discussed, outcomes, action items, course plans, and other objective summary items.
Summaries should be objective and include anything that other advisors would find useful as context for future appointments.
Summaries should never include personal or private topics discussed or disclosed by the student. Spartan Connect is not a HIPAA-compliant system and is not meant for any medical (or medical related) information.
Summaries should never include observations about a student in either behavior or appearance.
Appointment Summaries can also include attached files. These files are stored with the summary and can be accessed later.
Saving the Report for Later
If a report requires more time to complete, staff can minimize the report and return to it later. Minimized reports will save a draft of what has already been entered. Find the Minimize button at the top right of the overlay, next to the Close button:
Find minimized reports under the icon at the top left of the page, below the Spartan Connect header:
Clicking on a minimized dialog in this list will re-open the overlay and allow you to continue the report.
Submitting the Summary Report
Once the report is filled out and ready to be submitted, click on the Save Report button at the bottom of the overlay.
Avoiding Duplicate Appointment Entries
A common mistake for staff is to report on a scheduled appointment by using the Report on Appointment button from the student’s profile. The Report on Appointment button is only for creating brand new ad-hoc appointment summaries (drop-ins) and as such it will create a brand new appointment calendar entry along with the summary report.
The result is a problem twofold. The originally scheduled appointment is still waiting for its appointment summary and the newly created ad-hoc appointment has none of the “scheduled” data from the original appointment.
The long term result shows when running appointment reports. There will be twice as many appointments as actually happened, half of them will appear to be incomplete, and all completed appointment will appear to be drop-ins instead of scheduled.
Staff will also see this in their Recent Appointments list on their homepage with two rows per student appointment:
To avoid this, always use the Add Appointment Summary action item from your staff homepage appointments tab. Follow the instructions in the Upcoming/Current Appointments section above.