# Listen for scheduling updates

You may want to listen for scheduling updates to complete any pre-visit work. With these notifications, you can find out about patient appointment details, like the type of visit, provider name, location, or date. 

## Use cases

This API action may be a good fit for your organization if you want to be notified about these events in your connection’s EHR system:

- An outpatient appointment is created.
- A scheduled outpatient appointment is modified, rescheduled, or canceled.

After getting these notifications, you can query for more information or kick off your pre-visit workflow, like these types of use cases:

- Send pre-work questionnaires to patients. 
- Help with patient check-in prior to appointments. 
- Update patients about appointment changes.

## Supported systems

You can receive notifications like this with the Redox FHIR API.

Your connection's system can push notifications with a polling or subscription type of system. 

> **Lightweight or detailed notification**
>
> Depending on your connection’s capabilities, you can opt in for lightweight or detailed notifications.
>
> A <u>lightweight</u> notification is typically a bare bones message with the relevant identifier (e.g., patient, visit #) and an indication of “something's new” or “something has changed.” Lightweight notifications generally trigger you to do something within your own workflow or to query for more information.
>
> On the other hand, a <u>detailed</u> notification means that you receive all the data about what’s new or what's changed. This might be useful if you need to persist all that data in your system to complete your own unique workflow.

## Things you need to know

<details>
<summary>Scheduling versus encounter</summary>

Scheduling updates are different from encounter updates.

A scheduling notification is related to new appointments, changes to appointments, or pre-work before a patient appointment.

An encounter notification, on the other hand, is related to a patient arriving for an appointment. After getting this kind of notification, you can either ask for more information or follow up with the patient (e.g., send a patient survey). [Learn about listening for encounter updates](/fhir-api-actions/visit-and-scheduling/listen-for-outpatient-encounters).

</details>

<details>
<summary>Modified versus rescheduled</summary>

A rescheduled appointment means the appointment time has changed. A modified appointment means that some other aspect of the appointment has changed, like the scheduled provider. 

Both of these use the same notification type (`Scheduling Appointment Updated`), but a detailed notification for a rescheduled appointment includes details about the old and new appointment time.   

</details>

<details>
<summary>New appointments that show as modified</summary>

Typically, a new appointment occurs at the time the appointment is scheduled in the EHR system. However, if you recently went live, or if your backfill didn't include already-scheduled appointments, you may receive a notification for a modified appointment that doesn't exist in your system yet. This usually means that the appointment was scheduled before your go-live or backfill date.

You can potentially address this by adjusting your code to recognize whether the encounter ID is new to your system so that the appointment registers as a new one, even though it's technically a modified appointment in the EHR system.

</details>

<details>
<summary>Surgical procedure updates</summary>

If a scheduling notification pertains to a surgery, the notification will contain a resource type of `Procedure`. Within that resource entry, you can look for the `status` field to find out any updates to a scheduled procedure. There may be additional details in a `_status` extension, depending on whether your connection provides it. 

</details>

> **What's next? **
>
> Does this API action seem like a good fit for your unique workflow? Let your Technical Account Manager know! To start development, download the resource schema noted in the related action step. Then decide which data elements you need.
>
> If you’re new to Redox, [use the Quickstart guide](/quickstart-for-redox) to dive in. If you’re not engaged with our sales team yet, [talk to a Redoxer](https://redoxengine.com/forms/contact-us/) to get started.