Patent ID: 8165900

Claim:
A method for allowing a patient at a medical facility using a public kiosk to check in for currently scheduled appointments, the method comprising the steps of: providing the kiosk in a location for use by patients; via the kiosk, receiving identifying information from the patient checking in for an appointment at a selected time; retrieving data from a patient appointment database to identify currently scheduled appointments for the patient that are temporally proximate the selected time to allow the patient to selectively check in via the kiosk where the currently scheduled appointments are associated with currently scheduled appointment activities and initially scheduled appointment time slots; retrieving data from a best practices database that correlates circumstance subsets with opportunistic activities that should be performed; identifying at least one unscheduled activity for the patient that corresponds to a patient circumstance in the database in addition to the currently scheduled appointment activities for the patient; identifying at least one suggested appointment schedule including at least one open time slot during which the patient may complete the unscheduled activity and the currently scheduled appointment activities; and via the kiosk, presenting the at least one suggested appointment schedule to the patient; and prompting the patient to accept or reject the suggested appointment via a user interface corresponding to the kiosk; during an accepted appointment, receiving at least one activity entry and storing the activity entry in a first electronic medical record (EMR) wherein an activity entry includes data usable to determine whether a post-appointment follow-up activity associated with the activity entry should be performed; and selectively identifying post-appointment follow-up activities associated with the identified activity entry corresponding to the patient and selectively presenting at least a subset of the identified post-appointment follow-up activities at the kiosk.