Learn how to optimise your Best Practice Software setup with Cubiko
Cubiko draws data from your Practice Management Software (PMS) including the setup for users, appointments and your appointment book setup.
Cubiko metrics can show insights into your users in the appointment book such as Doctors, Nurses, Allied Health and Specialists.
Examples of metrics in Cubiko that use your practice appointment book data are:
- Utilisation
- Appointment count
- Unbooked appointments
- Wait time
- Dr & Nurse hour ratio
- Full-time equivalent metrics
TOP TIP! Watch our Power Tip video for an overview of how to have clean data in Cubiko Settings.
The sections included in this article are:
- Setting up new users
- Setting up appointment types
- Appointment book setup
- Appointment management
- Marking a user as away
Setting up new users
When you add a new user to your Practice Management Software (PMS), Cubiko will sync with this data on our next data extraction overnight. You can then go to your Cubiko Settings > Users to review their setup for Cubiko.
Key sections you will want to check the new user for:
- that they are ticked to include in metrics
- the Role is correct (i.e. a Doctor is set up as a Doctor in Cubiko). The role is synced from your PMS the first time the user is added. If for any reason you added the user in your PMS as a different role, Cubiko will import that role to set up the user.
TOP TIP! Ensure your Role Default settings are ticked as per your practice preferences to make this step quicker and easier.
Users created in the last 7 days will be highlighted in blue for ease of reference.
Setting up appointment types
Appointment types may have been created in your Practice Management Software (PMS) but may not have been reviewed and set up in Cubiko as per your practice preferences.
Appointments created in the last 7 days will be highlighted in blue for ease of reference.
Go to your Cubiko Settings > Appointments to review the setup for Cubiko.
TOP TIP! Watch our Power Tip video for an overview of Patient and Non-patient appointment setup.
Key sections you will want to check about the appointment type:
- it is ticked or unticked to include in metrics depending on your practice requirements
- it is ticked or unticked as a patient appointment
- tick your Telehealth appointment types
- tick your Covid-19 vaccination appointment types
- untick if you don't send appointment SMS reminders
To ensure metrics in Cubiko such as utilisation and appointment count are accurate, it is important to use appointment types correctly in your PMS.
For non-patient appointments, ensure you use the appointment types that do not need to be associated with a patient (these include 'Other' or 'Meeting' in Best Practice).
You can also create your own custom appointment types in your PMS and mark these as non-patient appointments in Cubiko Settings.
Ensure to tick the first box 'Include in metrics?' so you see this appointment type in your Cubiko dashboard and then do not tick 'Is this a patient appointment?'. This will ensure it is counted as a non-patient appointment or admin time in Cubiko.
More information about Cubiko time definitions is in our knowledge base article here.
NOTE: If you have created a patient in your PMS called 'Admin' or similar to use to block off time for users in the appointment book and use a 'patient appointment type' (for example, Standard Appointment), this will record as consulting time (or patient appointment time) in Cubiko. Instead, as above, create a new appointment type to use specifically for non-patient time.
TOP TIP! Use the non-patient appointment types that already exist in your PMS. In Best Practice software these include 'Other' and 'Meeting'. They can be renamed in Best Practice to suit your definition.
Appointment book setup
To ensure the data in your Cubiko metrics show correctly, it is important that each appointment book column or user in your PMS represents one user.
For example, if you have one appointment book column for multiple Nurses in your practice, then the Dr & Nurse hour ratio will not show correctly. This is because the number of session hours for your Nurse appointment book does not accurately represent the number of hours your Nurses are working in the practice.
TOP TIP! Ensure your Session setup is accurate for your users and only reflects the hours they are working in the practice.
Appointment book management
Appointment status
Key Cubiko metrics such as Appointment count, New patients, Cancelled appointments and Did not attend rate, rely on using the correct appointment status in your Best Practice appointment book.
Ensure that all appointments in your appointment book are marked throughout their appointment journey with the correct status. This refers to using the statuses:
- Waiting
- With doctor
- At billing
- Completed
- Did not Attend
- Cancelled
TOP TIP! Use Cubiko's Uncompleted appointments metric to find appointments that have not been marked as completed or DNA status and action.
Appointment confirmation
Cubiko can show any appointments that have not yet been confirmed in your Practice Management Software (PMS).
Cubiko does this by reading the status of the appointment from the built-in appointment confirmation tool.
An appointment can be marked as confirmed in two-ways in Best Practice:
- If you send SMS appointment confirmations, when a patient replies 'Yes' it will automatically update the appointment book confirmation status.
- You can manually update an appointment's confirmation status from the appointment book.
If your Practice uses manual confirmation, such as adding free text on the appointment, this metric may not be accurate to your appointment book.
TOP TIP! You can read more information about appointment book confirmation in the Bp knowledge base here.
Appointment blocking
When blocking time in your appointment book, it is important to consider the reason for the blocking of the time, as this will determine how best to block the time so it reflects in Cubiko accurately.
Key factors to consider:
- Should the time be marked as patient time or non-patient/admin time?
- Do you want to reduce the available Session hours shown in Cubiko?
- Is the user away?
Cubiko will sync with your server overnight each night and 'store' the appointment book setup for the day, especially for our hours and utilisation metrics. Ensure this are correct at the end of each day.
TOP TIP! Use the Session setup in your Best Practice software to first setup the correct working ours for the user. Then use patient and non-patient appointment types to allocate the time during the day to these two activities. At the end of the day ensure all appointments either have a status of completed or DNA.
Marking a user as away
Best Practice software
In your PMS, such as Best Practice, ensure to mark your user (doctor, nurse, allied health or specialist) as away using the Session setup feature in Bp or by marking the appointment timeslot as unavailable in your appointment book, using the 'right-click unavailable' feature in Best Practice.
Cubiko will be able to read that the user has been marked away and reflect this in our utilisation metrics. Session hours will be reduced by the time marked as away or right-click unavailable.
If a user leaves your practice ensure to end date the session in the session setup in Best Practice, so that no future session hours or unbooked hours are reflected in Cubiko metrics.
TOP TIP! More information about Cubiko time definitions is in our knowledge base article here.