When you set up a recurring series of appointments for a patient, it works differently than when you schedule a single independent appointment. A recurring series of appointments starts with one 'base' appointment for the first appointment, and the rest of the appointments in the series are what we can call 'virtual'. 'Virtual' refers to the subsequent appointments in a recurring appointment series. Virtual appointments appear on your calendar, but in order to optimize system performance, they're just saved a little differently than one-time, standalone appointments.
The future virtual appointments in the series appear on your schedule and become saved independent appointments in 3 ways:
- An automatic process runs 7 days before the appointment date to actualize the appointment
- A reminder is sent for the appointment
- You open the appointment to make any changes and click Save & Close or Save
Note: DrChrono's reporting pulls data from saved appointments. Since recurring appointments do not appear as saved appointments until 1 of the processes above happens. Therefore, future, virtual recurring appointments will not appear in reports.