Overview of Scheduling Features and Settings

SigmaMD gives you flexible tools to manage your clinic’s schedule—whether you offer in-person visits, virtual appointments, or at-home care. This guide covers how to set up appointment types, manage clinician availability, and use the calendar to coordinate care smoothly.

Appointment Settings

Scheduling settings live in Practice Settings > Scheduling, which is split into four tabs: Calendars, Appointment types, Appointment settings and Resources. The Appointment settings tab includes settings for:

Visit Types

Choose the available methods for events in your calendar: In-clinic, Video, Phone, or At-home.

Turn on Show location address in self-scheduling to show patients the location's address during self-scheduling.

Appointment Statuses

By default, SigmaMD provides the following status:

• Archived
• Booked
• Canceled
• Checked in
• Checked out
• Completed
• Confirmed
• No show

You can also create your custom statuses. Click on 'Add appointment status', give it a name and save.

Appointment Types

Appointment types have their own tab, in Practice Settings > Scheduling > Appointment types. Create custom appointment types to organize your visits and speed up scheduling.

Each appointment type has these options:

• Details
  • Name: Shown on the calendar and seen by the patient as well.
  • Color: Shown on the calendar.
  • Description: An internal note, not viewed by patients.
  • Default duration: The duration of the event when created. Can be changed later for each event.
  • Buffer time: Extra time added on the calendar after the event. To see it, turn on Show buffer in the calendar's More options.
  • Non-bookable resources: Rooms and equipment used during the event that patients can't book directly.

  • Visit types: From the available visit types (see above), choose which ones can be applied to this event.

    Coding: ICD-10 and CPT codes for this appointment type, helpful for later reporting.

  • Turn on Require ICD-10 to require a diagnosis on the appointment once its status is Completed, Checked in or Checked out.

    Forms: Linked forms are automatically assigned whenever this appointment type is booked.

  • Turn on Exclude previously completed forms to leave out any linked form the patient has already submitted.
• Patient Self-Scheduling
  • Enable patient self-scheduling: Choose if patients can schedule this appointment from their SigmaMD Patient App.
  • Earliest time period for booking: The earliest time a patient can schedule, for example one week from today.

  • Maximum time period for booking: How far in advance a patient can schedule, for example up to one year.

    Availability: Whether patients can self-schedule this type depends on this setting and the patient’s past appointments.

  • All visits: Always available, regardless of past appointments.
  • First visit only: Available only if the patient has no prior appointments. Patients imported from the practice's previous EMR are excluded, even if they have no appointments in SigmaMD.
  • After first visit only: Available only if the patient has at least one prior appointment. Imported patients count as existing patients, reflecting their relationship with the practice before the import.

  • For both, appointments with a status of Archived, Canceled or No show don't count as prior appointments.

    Daily limit: Turn on Max appointments per day, enter a number from 1 to 99 and choose how it counts. Available only when self-scheduling is enabled.

  • per location: Limits the appointments of this type each location can have in a day.
  • per clinician: Limits each clinician's appointments of this type in a day, across all locations. When the type uses Bookable resources, it limits each resource.
  • Once a limit is reached, patients can't self-schedule this type at that location, or with that clinician or resource, on that day.
  • Appointments your team books count toward the limit; Canceled, No show and Archived ones don't.
  • Your team can still book past the limit from the calendar.
• Patient memberships: Filter who can book this type by membership.
  • All memberships and none: All patients can book this appointment type.
  • All memberships: Only patients with an active membership, retail or employer.
  • No membership: Only patients without an active membership.
  • Selected memberships: Choose one or more plans. Only patients with an active membership in one of them can book this type.

  • Allow deferred memberships and Allow paused memberships: Shown for All memberships and Selected memberships. Turn one on to also let patients with a Deferred or Paused membership book. Both are off by default. Under Selected memberships, they apply only to the picked plans.

    Bookable calendars: Pick the clinicians patients can choose from when they self-schedule this type.

  • Turn on Bookable resources to let patients book a resource instead of a clinician: a room, a piece of equipment or any bookable space.
• Reason for visit: Set whether patients must give a reason when self-scheduling: Optional or Required.
• Note to patient: A note patients see when scheduling. Select text to format it or add links.

If your practice has multiple locations, you can also restrict appointment types to specific locations. After selecting a location, non-bookable resources are automatically filtered accordingly.

Practice Calendars

Resources and team members can each have their own bookable calendar, managed in Practice Settings > Scheduling > Calendars. A practice calendar carries its own:

• Availability, by day of the week or by custom dates
• Assigned location, so multi-location practices stay separate
• Overlapping appointments setting, with a maximum per slot
• Booking notification recipients

Events are booked against these calendars, so the room, the equipment and the clinician are all reserved in a single step.

Clinician Availability

To manage clinicians' working hours, go to Practice Settings > Scheduling > Calendars, hover over the team member and click Manage calendar.

• Set working hours for each day.
• Define the location where they’ll be working during that time (for multi-location practices)
• Add shifts and out-of-office periods. For a lunch break, end one shift before lunch and start another after it.
• Select available appointment types and visit types for each shift.

This controls when a clinician is available in the calendar and for patient self-scheduling. Busy events synced in from a team member's Google or Microsoft calendar also block self-scheduling.

To define which appointments are available for a given day:

• Click Availability.
• Select the day, time, appointment types and visit types available for that shift.
• Turn on new appointment types in each shift; they start off in shifts that already exist.
• Only those options configured in Appointment Settings will appear here.

By configuring shifts, clinicians ensure that only the appropriate appointment times, appointment types and visit types are made available for scheduling.

Calendar Management

From the Clinician Calendar, your team can view and manage upcoming visits in one place.

You can:

• Filter appointments by practice calendar, location (for multi-location practices), appointment type, status, or membership plan.

  

• Create new appointments manually:

  

• Color events by appointment type or by practice calendar, using Set colors by in the toolbar

  

• Click into appointments to view details, update status, or make changes

  

• Duplicate an event or a task from its details, with Duplicate event or Duplicate task

The calendar keeps your team aligned and your schedule running smoothly.

Patient Scheduling Settings and Notifications

In Practice Settings > Scheduling > Appointment settings, you can customize how patients manage and receive updates about their appointments.

• Enable or disable patient confirmations and cancellations

  

• Customize automated messages:
  • Confirmation notifications
  • Reminders per appointment
  • Flexible timing options (minutes, hours, or days)

• Edit your cancellation policy, which appears during self-booking and in confirmation emails

  

These tools help reduce no-shows and keep patients informed every step of the way.