Patent ID: 7979294

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of providing a healthcare provider the ability to schedule an appointment, comprising: receiving an electronic request to schedule an appointment for a patient, the request including an initial type of visit; electronically accessing a stored listing of types of visits to determine whether the initial type of visit has been designated as requiring the use of a decision support tool for scheduling that type of visit; implementing the at least one computer-implemented decision support tool based on the determination that the initial type of visit is associated with a decision support tool, the decision support tool configured to implement the steps of: identifying additional input needed to schedule the appointment that is particular to the initial type of visit, filtering the additional input based on a stored patient medical record, requesting the filtered additional information from the appointment scheduler, receiving the additional input from the appointment scheduler, and generating at least one system generated type of visit different from the initial type of visit to replace the initial type of visit based on the additional input and based on the type of visit; and scheduling the appointment for the patient using the system generated type of visit in lieu of scheduling an appointment using the initial type of visit.