You Spoke, We Listened

  • Published
  • By Capt. Tara Waddles
  • 22 Medical Group
MCCONNELL AIR FORCE BASE, Kan. --  The days of staying up until midnight to book an appointment with TRICARE Online are history. In response to your desire to have added flexibility in scheduling future and follow-up appointments, we have received approval to implement a more traditional appointing system in our Family Medicine clinics. 

This new process allows future and follow-up appointment scheduling to better fit with your scheduling needs. You may find these "new to McConnell" appointment types very familiar as they are already in use at many Air Force medical treatment facilities. 

The new appointment types are Acute, Routine, EST (established) and Wellness. An Acute appointment is appropriate for any medical condition that needs to be evaluated by a provider within 24 hours of your appointment request. 

Routine appointments address any medical condition that is not urgent in nature or has not been previously assessed by your McConnell Primary Care Manager (PCM). Routine appointments may be scheduled 1-7 days out from the date you identify a need to see your PCM. 

An "EST" appointment is any follow-up appointment you may need (examples include evaluation of lab results, blood pressure etc). EST appointments are scheduled for a date anytime in the future, usually within 28 days, and can be used when you need to see a provider for a recurring health need or provider directed follow up. 

Wellness appointments are for physicals, or any other preventive health measure provided by your PCM. Wellness appointments are scheduled anywhere from 7 to 28 days in the future. As always, we strongly encourage you to use TRICARE Online as your first stop for booking appointments. Your appointment can also be booked by calling the appointment line at 759-6300 from 7:00 am - 4:00 pm Monday through Friday. 

To further enhance services in our Family Medicine Clinic we have been working to hire a staff pediatrician. We also received approval from Air Staff to hire an additional physician so we can provide improved access for your healthcare needs. 

In our ongoing initiatives to provide the best medical care to our Team McConnell families we need your support in notifying the clinic as soon as possible if you need to cancel an appointment. This allows us to reutilize that appointment time to see other patients and further improve access. 

For your planning, any appointment cancelled within 2 hours prior to the scheduled time is extremely hard to fill as most patients cannot adjust schedules to make it to the clinic that quickly. Therefore we ask that you cancel within 24 hours, of course earlier is even better! This will greatly help us in providing the best healthcare to our beneficiaries.