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 duration will be calculated according to the start and end times manually set on the visit, and the scheduled duration will not be readjusted to account for daylight saving time. See the example below:
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 duration 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 end time than the rest of the visits in the recurrence. In the first example below, visits in the recurrence are normally scheduled from 11:30 pm to 3:30 am, but the visit that occurs during the end of daylight saving time is scheduled from 11:30 pm to 2:30 am to account for the extra hour that is gained.
In the second example, visits in the recurrence are normally scheduled from 6:45 pm to 7:55 am, but the end time for the third visit shown has been changed to end one hour later because it occurs during the time change at the beginning of daylight saving time.
Note that unchecking use service duration will not prevent the end time of a visit that belongs to a recurrence from being adjusted. You will need to manually edit the end time of visits in a recurrence that occur during the beginning or end of daylight saving time.
Limitations: If a visit is dragged and dropped in the calendar so that it no longer occurs between 2:00 and 3:00 am when daylight saving is beginning/ending, the start and end time will remain the same interval apart, and the quantity will change to reflect the actual number of hours between start and end time. For example, if there is a visit scheduled to occur when daylight saving is ending with a start time of 12:30 am, end time of 3:30 am, and duration of four hours (to account for the extra hour gained), if you drag and drop it in the calendar so that it starts three hours earlier, the start and end time will become 9:30 pm and 12:30 am, and duration will change to three hours, even though the duration no longer matches the visit length that was originally scheduled.
This behavior also happens when dragging and dropping a visit so that it overlaps with the 2:00 am to 3:00 am slot on a Sunday when daylight saving is beginning/ending. The start and end times will remain the same interval apart, but the duration will be updated to account for the hour lost or gained, even that duration does not reflect the originally scheduled duration.
Funding Blocks
Since visits are covered according to their quantity, funding block coverage is not affected by daylight saving time.
Learn more:
Time Off/Unavailability/Availability
For any scheduled recurring time off/unavailability/availability crossing daylight saving time, the End Time will be adjusted to maintain a constant total quantity for each scheduled occurrence.
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: