During onboarding, your Aesthetix CRM onboarding manager will provide you with a Google Sheet called the Appointment Categorization Document. This document plays a critical role in automating your patient pipeline and ensuring appointments sync correctly from your EMR into Aesthetix CRM.
This guide walks you through:
What the document is
Why it's essential
How to complete it accurately
How it powers your pipeline automation
The categorization sheet contains a list of all appointment types pulled from your EMR via API, pre-populated into a table. Using AI, we’ve made an initial best-guess categorization, but you are responsible for validating and correcting this data.
Each appointment type must be matched to one of the following Appointment Category options, which are standardized custom fields in Aesthetix CRM:
Category Name | Description |
Surgical Consult | Consultations related to surgical procedures |
Surgical Appointment | Actual surgical procedure appointments |
Non-Surgical Consult | Consultations for non-surgical treatments (e.g., injectables, lasers) |
Non-Surgical Appointment | Non-surgical treatment visits |
Pre-Op Appointment | Appointments prior to surgery |
Post-Op Appointment | Follow-up appointments after surgery |
Block | Internal time blocks, admin events, or placeholders (excluded from CRM) |
Important: Keep the naming exact when selecting categories—these values map directly to a custom field and are used in logic for pipeline automation and AI training.
Your categorization determines how Aesthetix CRM interprets appointment data coming from your EMR. Without accurate categorization, patients may:
Not move in the pipeline correctly
Skip stages entirely
Be marked “won” or “completed” before they actually undergo treatment
Cause confusion for staff and automation logic
For example, if a surgical appointment is incorrectly categorized as a consult, pipeline automation could mistakenly mark a patient as only being interested—not yet scheduled—despite already having surgery booked.
This categorization system currently applies to the following EMRs:
ModMed
4D EMR
Nextech Cloud
Nextech Practice Plus
PatientNow Pro
These are typically used by plastic surgery practices leveraging dual-pipeline architecture (non-surgical + surgical).
Here’s a simplified breakdown of how pipeline automation works based on your categorization:
Surgical Consult is booked → patient moves to Consult Booked stage in the Surgery pipeline.
Surgical Consult is completed/checked out → patient moves to Consult Completed.
Surgical Appointment is booked next → moves to Surgery Scheduled.
Surgical Appointment is completed → moves to Surgery Complete (Won).
Note: Pre-op and post-op appointments do not move pipeline stages. They're still categorized but are excluded from pipeline automation to avoid false triggers—many practices book them along with surgeries.
Any appointment type that should not affect automation or appear in the CRM should be categorized as Block. Common examples include:
Internal meetings
Staff trainings
Lunches
Room blocks
These are filtered out during sync to avoid cluttering the system or triggering automations.
Review every Appointment Type listed in the Google Sheet.
Confirm or update the Appointment Category from the dropdown.
Use only the exact category values listed above.
Let your onboarding manager know once the list is fully reviewed and approved.
If new appointment types are added to your EMR after onboarding:
Send them to support so they can be added to the categorization sheet.
This ensures the AI continues to map them correctly.
While AI will attempt to categorize new types on its own, manual review ensures optimal accuracy.
Issue | Root Cause | Fix |
Patients not moving in pipeline | Appointment not categorized correctly or missing | Review and update the categorization sheet |
Appointments appearing that shouldn't | Appointment type should be marked as Block | Update categorization to "Block" |
Incorrect stage transitions | Wrong category used (e.g., consult marked as treatment) | Double-check the category used |
Accurate appointment categorization is the foundation of automation for Aesthetix CRM + EMR integrations. It determines:
Pipeline movements
Automated workflows
Accurate reporting
Take your time. Get it right. It only needs to be done once, but it unlocks reliable automation that works for your entire team.
If you have any questions, reach out to your onboarding manager or support.
