Adding and Managing Clients

This page covers the day-to-day workflow of adding patients to a waiting list, understanding what the list columns mean, assigning team members, and using filters to focus on the entries that need attention.

Adding a client to a waiting list

Patients are added to a waiting list from their client record, not from the waiting list itself. This ensures you are always working from a confirmed client identity rather than creating entries that need to be matched later.

1. Find the client using the Clients List or any other route to the client record.
2. Open the Client View window.
3. Go to the Waiting Lists section within the client view. This section shows any lists the client is already a member of.
4. Click Add To Waiting List in the toolbar.
5. Complete the form and save.

The add-to-waiting-list form

The form has six fields:

Waiting List — select the list to add the client to. Only active waiting lists are shown. If the list you need does not appear, it may need to be created first (see Getting Started with Waiting Lists).

Join Date — the date the client is considered to have joined the waiting list. This is the anchor date from which time waiting and breach dates are calculated. In most cases this will be today’s date, but it can be backdated where a referral was received earlier and the patient should be credited with that waiting time.

Priority — the clinical priority for this entry: Urgent, Soon or Routine. This determines which target waiting time is used to calculate the breach date. Priority is typically set based on the referring clinician’s assessment.

Manage Dates Manually — controls whether the breach date is calculated automatically or set by hand.

• When set to automatic (the default), the breach date is calculated from the join date plus the target days for the selected priority. The calculated date is stored on the entry and the system manages it from that point.
• When set to manual, the breach date fields become editable and you can enter the exact date the patient should be seen or admitted by. Use this when a clinician has specified a particular date, or when the standard target calculation does not reflect the clinical need.

TCI / Appointment Date — if a date has already been arranged for the patient, it can be entered here. This is optional at the point of adding — most entries will not have a TCI date yet. It can be set or changed later through the status change workflow.

General Comments — free text for anything relevant to scheduling this patient. Common uses include noting patient preferences (“no Mondays,” “morning appointments only”), access requirements (“needs interpreter,” “wheelchair access”), or clinical context that affects scheduling.

Multiple waiting list entries

A client can be on more than one waiting list at the same time. For example, a patient might be waiting for both an outpatient review in one specialty and a day-case procedure in another. Each entry is independent — with its own priority, breach date, status and comments — and all are visible from the Waiting Lists section of the client view.

The waiting list view

Clicking on a waiting list from the Waiting Lists section opens the list of all clients currently on that list. The columns displayed are:

Last, First — the client’s surname and first name. These are drawn from the client record and update automatically if the client’s details are changed.

Priority — Urgent, Soon or Routine. This is the priority assigned to this particular waiting list entry, not a property of the client overall.

Status — the current status of the entry: Waiting, Scheduled, Attended, Suspended or Removed. See Changing Status and Suspensions for full details on each status and how to transition between them.

Breach Date — the date by which the patient should be seen (for OPD lists) or admitted (for Inpatient and Day Case lists). This is the most important scheduling column — it tells your team the deadline they are working against.

Where a suspension has been applied, the displayed breach date is adjusted forward to account for the time the clock was paused. When this has happened, an indicator appears alongside the date to show that it differs from the originally stored value. Hovering over or clicking the indicator shows the original date and the number of suspended days. See Understanding Breach Dates and Targets for a full explanation of how this works.

Weeks Waiting — the number of weeks the patient has been actively waiting. This excludes any time spent in suspension. It is calculated from the join date, adjusted for suspended days, and updates automatically.

Assigned To — the name or names of the Diarybook users assigned to this entry. If no one is assigned, this column is blank.

TCI — the To Come In date, if one has been set. TCI is the date the patient has been given to attend. A blank TCI means the patient is still waiting to be scheduled. A populated TCI typically corresponds to a status of Scheduled.

DOB — the client’s date of birth, drawn from the client record. Useful for quick identity confirmation when working through the list.

Joined — the date the client was added to this waiting list. This is the anchor date for all waiting time calculations.

Validated — the date the client last responded to a validation request confirming they still require their place on the list. If the client has never been validated, this column is blank. See Client Validation for details on how the validation process works.

Notes — the general comments entered when the client was added or subsequently edited. This column displays a summary; the full text is visible when the entry is opened.

Opening a waiting list entry

Clicking on a row in the list view opens a compound window showing the waiting list entry alongside the full client record. The window has two groups of sections.

The first group relates to the waiting list entry itself:

• WL Entry — all fields associated with the entry (priority, status, breach date, TCI, referral details, comments) plus a list of any suspension records. The toolbar on this section provides three actions: Edit, Change Status and Assign User.
• Log — a chronological record of every status change, edit and assignment made to this entry, showing who made the change, when, and the details or reason provided.

The second group is the standard client view, giving you access to the same sections available from any client record: Client Details, Groups, Appointments, Attendance, Group History, Waiting Lists, SMS, Duplicates, Progress Notes and Files. This means you can check a patient’s appointment history, send an SMS or review their notes without leaving the waiting list context.

Editing an entry

To edit a waiting list entry, open it and click Edit in the WL Entry toolbar. You can update the priority, comments, referral details and — if the entry is in manual mode — the breach date and TCI date directly.

Changing the priority on an entry that is in automatic mode will recalculate the breach date based on the new priority’s target. If you need to override the recalculated date, switch the entry to manual mode.

Assigning users

Click Assign User in the WL Entry toolbar to assign one or more Diarybook users to the entry. Assigned users are displayed in the Assigned To column on the list view and can be used as a filter criterion.

Assigning users is useful for dividing a long list across team members. For example, a waiting list coordinator might assign entries alphabetically, by sub-specialty, or by geographic area — whatever suits the team’s workflow. Assignments can be changed at any time.

Filtering the list

The Filter button in the toolbar on the list view opens a form with three filter options:

• Users — show only entries assigned to selected users.
• Statuses — show only entries with selected statuses (e.g. show Waiting and Scheduled, hide Attended and Removed).
• Priorities — show only entries at selected priority levels.

Filters can be combined. For example, filtering by Status = Waiting and Priority = Urgent shows only urgent patients who have not yet been given a TCI date — a useful view for a scheduling meeting or a weekly review of overdue cases.

When a filter is active, the list view reflects only the matching entries. Clearing the filter restores the full list.

Practical tips

Sort by breach date. The most common way to work through a waiting list is to sort by breach date ascending, so the patients closest to breaching appear at the top. Combined with a status filter for Waiting only, this gives you a ready-made priority list for scheduling.

Use comments consistently. Free text is most useful when teams agree on what goes there. Consider establishing conventions — for example, always noting patient contact preferences, always noting if a translator is needed, always noting if the patient has been discussed at a meeting. Consistent comments make filtering by eye faster and reduce the chance of important information being missed.

Review assigned users regularly. Staff leave, move roles and go on leave. A quick check that every entry has a current assigned user prevents entries from falling into a gap where no one is actively managing them.

Check the Validated column. An entry with a blank or old validation date may represent a patient who no longer needs their place. Prioritising validation for long-waiting patients before scheduling them avoids wasted slots.

Next steps

• Changing Status and Suspensions — how to move entries through statuses, suspend and resume, and what each transition requires.