How to ensure Cubiko is correctly calculating the session hours and utilisation within Cubiko, by following best practices, as recommended by MedicalDirector.
Cubiko showcases a range of data generated through the information we extract from your Practice Management Software (PMS). This includes sessions, appointments, and billings.
Cubiko calculates utilisation and other metrics by looking at the sessions which are set up at the Practice and available in your PMS.
Utilisation percentage is calculated by looking at the amount of time available in your diaries and how much of that time was spent seeing patients. Your session data also has a direct impact on other metrics such as billings per hour, so it is important that you follow the recommended appointment book management, as detailed below.
Further information about time definitions in Cubiko is available here.
In this article, we will cover:
- Session types and setup
- Standard sessions
- Special sessions
- Non-patient appointments and admin time
- Blocking out a small amount of time in the diary for other uses
- Other important information
- FAQs
Other frequently asked questions about session times will be located at the bottom of this article, or you can click above to go there if you are looking for something not covered in the points above.
Session types and setup
When multiple session types are applied to a single appointment book, the order of priority is as follows:
- Absent sessions
When a practitioner is going to be on leave, they should be marked as "Absent" using the "Days Absent" feature in the "Setup > Availability" section of Pracsoft. - Special sessions
Special sessions take precedence over Standard Sessions when applied to an appointment book. this is also reflected in Cubiko. - Standard sessions
Standard Sessions with the Practitioner as "Default Sessions" are at the bottom of the pecking order. Once you add a Standard Session with a specific Practitioner, this will overwrite what the customer sees and take precedence.
Standard sessions
Standard sessions are used to set the regular hours of a practitioner. If all practitioners in your practice work the same usual hours, then you can use Standard Sessions with the Practitioner as "Default Sessions".
If not all Practitioners work the same sessions, you can choose that Practitioner and set their hours separately.
The recommendation from MedicalDirector is that session breaks are scheduled in the session details, as above.
How to: If a Doctor is working 9am - 5pm and you need to schedule in morning tea or lunch so no bookings occur, you would check with the Doctor what time works for them and then make Session one start time and end at morning tea time. Session two would be the end of morning tea, to the beginning of lunch etc.
Special sessions
Special sessions should be used when a practitioner works different hours than their usual schedule, either as a one-off or on a recurring basis. For example, if a practitioner has a fortnightly or monthly day which is shorter or longer, a special session should be used.
In Cubiko, the special sessions will override the standard sessions. Ensure that you schedule accordingly to block out lunches and other breaks, as detailed above.
Non-patient appointments and admin time
Non-Patient Appointments are free-text fields that allow you to mark a practitioner as unavailable for a specific time period. Otherwise known as 'drag-and-drop'.
While this option is flexible and allows you to specify the reason for the practitioner's unavailability, it is not recommended for marking a full day as absent, or for marking an appointment time as unavailable. It will still be counted as session time if you choose this option.
Instead, we recommend removing the session or marking it as an absent session.
Blocking out a small amount of time for other uses
If you want to mark off a portion of time in your diary that is shown in Cubiko as non-patient time, we recommend that you follow the below process:
- Set up an appointment type in your PMS, wait 24 hours for the next load for this appointment type to appear in your Cubiko settings.
- In Cubiko, head to your Settings and untick the option for ‘is this a patient appointment?’, this will ensure it is marked as non-patient time.
- You can then measure the time allocated to this appointment type in Cubiko, within our utilisation metrics, looking at non-patient time.
For more information about Cubiko Settings, please head here.
Other important information
In Pracsoft, you can have as many practitioners as you like in a single appointment book. However, keep in mind the following limitations:
- Column width: As practitioners are added, the columns will become narrower. This may not work for your Practice, but naming conventions will need to remain consistent, for the data for each user to be merged in Cubiko.
- Appointment length: Each appointment book can only have one appointment length. For example, if there are three practitioners that work on 10-minute appointments and two practitioners that have 15-minute appointments, the practitioners with 10-minute appointments would need to be in one appointment book, and the 15-minute appointments would require a separate appointment book. In Cubiko, when looking across all appointment books, Cubiko chooses the largest denominator, which in this case, would be 5 minutes. This means that if an appointment is 15 minutes long, it will show as 3 x 5 minute appointments in the list of appointments - but counted only as one appointment in Cubiko.
- Duplicate Session Sessions: Because there are multiple PMS platforms being used, this means that you could have multiple appointment books. For example, you can have;
- Multiple appointment books across PMS
- Multiple appointment books in the same PMS, for different providers
This can often lead to session hours being generated in the duplicated appointment books, which leads to session times being duplicated.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I block out time for Practitioners' lunch breaks?
Go here and read our example of how to do this using standard sessions.
Some Practitioners will see 3 patients and then break, how do I block this out so it is not counted?
This is why Cubiko created 'admin' time, as we recognise that there may be periods of time where practitioners are unable to see patients and they spend time contacting patients or making notes. This does not need to be 'admin' time, as long as your Practice understands what this time is being used for, that's all that matters.
I seem to have really high session hours, how do I resolve this?
You likely need to manually delete any duplicate sessions. You can find these sessions by checking for these duplicate sessions in the hours page, and filtering by practitioners and days to see what is being counted as 'session time'. Head to Past clinic metrics > Consulting hours > Session hours. Then go into your PMS and remove the sessions that are not applicable.
I can see duplicate users in my Cubiko dashboard - how do I fix this?
We have created a separate article for this, you can find it here.
I don't want to change the way I use my PMS, is there a workaround?
So work of the advice given to us by our integration partner, so unfortunately there is no other recommended work-around at this time.