Preventing Line Jumping

By default, auto-rooming “ignores” patients who have not checked in yet. For example:

1. Let’s say it is 1:50PM

2. A physician is actively seeing their 1:30PM patient

3. Their 1:45PM patient has not checked in

4. Their 2:00PM patient has checked in already

5. In order to minimize physician “downtime”, CHIME will normally auto-room the 2:00PM patient so that the physician, when they finish seeing their 1:30PM patient, has a patient ready to see.

This is sometimes perceived as a problem or mistake if, for example:

5. The 1:45PM patient arrives at 1:52PM (after the 2:00PM patient has been roomed)

6. The physician finishes their 1:30PM patient, sees that their 2:00PM appointment has been roomed, but not their 1:45PM appointment.

7. It’s perceived as “why was my 2:00PM patient roomed ahead of my 1:45PM patient”?

Our experience is that most clinics prefer this outcome even though occasionally patients will be seen “out of order”, especially in situations where a physician is running late and patients check-in late.

However, if a clinic prefers, there’s an option of enabling a feature so that early patients will only be assigned a room after the on-time patient’s appointment deadline has passed, effectively preventing line jumping.

The “deadline” of the earlier patient is essentially a configurable deadline after which the earlier patient will be considered late for their appointment, as mentioned on our Late Patients page.   If this feature is enabled, as long as the earlier patient is not late, the subsequent patient will not be auto-roomed. The earliest the subsequent patient will be roomed is after the earlier patient’s deadline for checking in has passed.

Going back to the above example, if enabled, this feature will mean the 2:00PM patient will not be roomed until the 1:45PM patient’s deadline passes (E.g. if the deadline is 10 minutes, the 2:00PM patient will not be roomed any earlier than 1:45PM + 10 minutes = 1:55PM)