How does scheduling in AlayaCare account for the beginning/end of daylight saving time?

AlayaCare's scheduling module has been designed to adjust visits automatically to account for the hour lost or gained when daylight saving time is beginning or ending (spring forward/fall back). 

Please note that if your agency/branch is located in a province or state that does not observe daylight saving time, this behaviour will not apply as long as the correct time zone has been selected in AlayaCare. 

Scheduling single visits during the beginning/end of daylight saving

If a single visit is scheduled during the beginning or end of daylight saving time, there are two possible behaviors, depending on whether you select use service duration when scheduling the visit.

If you use the option use service duration, the visit will be scheduled to begin at your chosen start time, and the end time will be automatically readjusted to account for daylight saving time and keep the visit duration set on the service code. 

In the example below, the service duration is 60 minutes and the selected start time is 1:50 am for a visit that occurs during the beginning of daylight saving time. The end time has been automatically set to 3:50 am (rather than 2:50 am) so the visit duration remains the same in spite of the lost hour. 

Beginning of daylight saving:

If you wish to schedule a visit with a service duration of four hours (240 minutes) that starts at 12:30 am on the Sunday when daylight saving ends, the end time will be set to 3:30 am so that the scheduled duration remains the same despite the hour that is gained. 

End of daylight saving:

If you do not use the use service duration option when scheduling the visit, the scheduled visit end time will be maintained and on the visit, and the scheduled duration will be adjusted to account for daylight saving time. In these cases, the visit duration will need to be manually adjusted as needed. Review the example below for more details.

Service duration is unchecked for a visit scheduled (from 1:00 am to 4:00 am) during the beginning of daylight saving time:

Start time is 1:00 am, end time is 4:00 am, but the duration is 2 hours because of the hour lost:

Scheduling recurrences across beginning/end of daylight saving time

If any visits in a recurrence occur during the beginning or end of daylight saving time, the visit end time of that visit will be automatically adjusted to account for the hour that was lost or gained. 

As a result, the visit will have a different duration than the rest of the visits in the recurrence and will need to be adjusted accordingly.

Edge Case for Visit Projections

The system handles visits that are 1 hour or less that part of a recurrence during visit projections during DST. Visits that are 1 hour or less with a start time or end time during the DST time change will be converted to 1 minute visits during visit projections. These visits will need to be manually adjusted after visit projections.

Example: the visit start date is March 12, 2023 at the beginning of DST with a start time of 1:45am and end time of 2:15am will be converted to 1:45-1:46am during visit projections.

Funding Blocks

Since visits are covered according to their quantity, funding block coverage is not affected by daylight saving time.

Learn more:

• How do I view/add/edit funding for a service/visits? (funding blocks)

Time Off/Unavailability/Availability

For any scheduled recurring time off/unavailability/availability crossing daylight saving time, the Start Time and End Time will remain the same even if it is entered over daylight savings. Previously, they used to be adjusted so to offer a constant total quantity for each scheduled occurrence, but now, users will note that the start and end times will not change for their available time, and will remain as 00:00 - 08:00, like the sample shown below. 

Learn more:

• How do I set up/edit/delete time off types?
• How do I set/edit unavailabilities in my employee's calendar?

Identifying overnight visits affected by daylight saving time

If you wish to edit visits that will be impacted before daylight saving time begins or ends, you can create a report in Data Exploration using the visit cube.

If you wish to identify overnight visits that occur during the beginning/end of daylight saving time, you will need to filter your report to visits that begin the day before the time change and end on the day of the time change. After creating a new report and selecting visit as the report type, add the visit start date field as a filter and set it to include the day before the clocks change and exclude the day before and the day after the clocks change. 

In the example below, daylight saving time is scheduled to begin on March 14, 2021 so the following filters were set to include visits starting on March 13 and exclude visits ending on March 13 or 15: Visit Start Date includes 03-13-2021 and Visit End Date excludes 03-13-2021 and 03-15-2021.

 

Note that these filters pertain to overnight visits only and will not allow you to identify visits scheduled for the day of the time change that start before 2:00 am and end after 2:00 am. If you have visits that match this scenario, you would need to filter the report to all visits scheduled for the day that daylight saving time begins or ends and verify whether any visits occur across the 2:00 am to 3:00 am window when an hour is gained or lost.

Next, add the following rows and measures: Branch Name (if applicable), Visit ID, Client Full Name, Employee Full Name, Visit Start Day, Visit End Day, Visit Start Time, Visit End Time, and Visit Scheduled Hours Sum. 

                      

You can use the resulting report to identify the overnight visits that will be affected and may need to be modified depending on your organization's preferred method of handling daylight saving.

Learn more:

• Feature Overview: Data Exploration