Appointment Diary Options

Add
Look this up under the type of new record you want to add – e.g. Client - Add or Appointment - Add

Address
See: Client - Address

Appointment
An Appointment is an entry in the Appointments Diary for a client. When you set up your diary, you are setting up the free appointment slots. You then book Appointments into these free slots. Each Appointment can be marked with a status, represented by a colour, to show that the client has arrived for their appointment (green), is currently being seen by the practitioner (orange) or the appointment is completed (purple). You can also mark an appointment as DNA (did not attend) and select a reason why the client has not attended – these are marked in red. When booking an appointment on the diary, this is normally done by highlight a free slot then selecting to add the new appointment. When doing this, the appointment details such as date, time, duration, diary user, treatment room, etc. are already known and you do not have to enter them.

Appointments Diary
The PPS Appointments Diary allows you to record your client appointments, and manage your available appointment times. There are a variety of diary view styles to suit your needs including single day, whole week, single or multiple users etc. You can access the PPS Appointments Diary from the PPS Menu: Appointments – Appointments Diary, or by pressing Ctrl-A on the Keyboard. You can also click on Appointments, or Diary on the Task Bar. The diary has a toolbar to give you access to common functions such as adding appointments, and when the diary is displayed, clicking on an item in the task bar, or selecting from the PPS menu will normally be related to the currently highlighted appointment. For example, if an appointment for Mrs Smith is highlighted, then clicking on the Accounts option on the task bar will show the accounts screen for Mrs Smith. --br-- A Practitioner on the PPS Appointments Diary is referred to as a “Diary User”. This is to allow the diary to be used by more people than just Practitioners in your practice. You can select to set up and use your diary either by Diary Users, or by Treatment Rooms – this can suit they way that you are used to booking your clients into the diary. --br-- See below for further detailed information relating to the various Appointments Diary functions in PPS.

Arrived
See: Appointment - Arrived

Being Seen
See: Appointment - Being Seen

Change
See: Cash Desk; Modify

Charge
A charge is the first step for PPS billing. You have to create a charge before you can raise an invoice – a charge is a “line item” on an invoice. Charges can be either for various types of treatment, or for stock/sundry items you may sell. PPS has a “list of standard charges” that you set up yourself giving you quick access to your charges via a code, or description. There are several ways in PPS that you can create a charge, you can also skip very quickly from creating a charge to recording a payment and PPS creates the invoice for you as you go. --br-- You can create a charge in the following ways (which way you regularly use will depend upon the way that you prefer to use PPS): 1) from the PPS Menu: Accounts – Create a Charge; 2) from the PPS Taskbar click on Create a Charge (if you have the diary open then highlighting an appointment first will create the charge related to that appointment); 3) from the PPS Menu: Accounts – Charges List, and click the New button; 4) from the diary, highlight an appointment, right-click on the appointment and select the Client Charge option from the pop-up menu; 5) when completing a consultation record, the “consultation complete” screen allows you to create the charge; 6) when completing an appointment the “appointment complete” screen allows you to create the charge; 7) Cash Desk can be used to create charges. The first four options above will show the Client Charge screen. This allows you to select / enter all the appropriate charge details and save the charge, or go on to create an invoice for the charge. An invoice can contain more than one charge so you do not always want to create the invoice each time. --br-- Whenever creating a charge, you have the option to select who will be invoiced for the charge, this includes the Client, and any one of the Third-Part Contacts associated with the client. This is how to bill an insurance company directly, for example. If the client does not have a third party contact associated with them, then you can select one while creating the charge, and select to always associate this third-part with the client. This will update the third-party contact details for you on the Main Client Details screen.

Client
Client records are the hub of your PPS database. PPS refers to these records as “Clients” rather than “Patients” because PPS is used across a variety of business and clinical disciplines, some of whom use the term “client” and others use “patient”. A client record can have either minimal details entered, such as first name and surname, or can be a comprehensive range of details including full address/contact details, alternative addresses, DOB, sex, “known as”, full profile details including “source of introduction”, occupation (plus a range of entries you can set up yourself). In addition you can associate a variety of third-parties to clients such as doctors, insurance companies, etc. The more comprehensive the details you store for each client, the greater the opportunities to use these details in your reports and mail-merge operation. For example, by recording the “source of introduction” for each client (such as yellow pages, local advert, recommendation, etc.) you can run almost any report in PPS to show a breakdown by “source of introduction”, for example “practice revenue” by “source of introduction” will show where you earn the most money from – thus where you should concentrate most on your advertising!

Columns
See: Appointments Diary - Columns

Complete
The term “Complete” is used in PPS for both Appointments and Consultations. You can select to Complete an Appointment – where is it marked in Purple, and you can then raise the charge, book another appointment, etc., and you can Complete a Consultation – where you can decide if the Treatment Episode is completed, or how many more consultations are required, you can raise the charge, produce a Discharge Letter etc. The term “Complete” is also used for Treatment Episodes that have an “End Date” entered – see: Completed Episodes.

Consultation
PPS uses the term “consultation” to define each time you see a client, whether or not it is an initial session, or a follow up one. PPS has a clinical notes system that allows you to record Consultation notes each time you see a client, and these are all part of a Treatment Episode. If you see a client once, and their treatment is completed in one consultation, then the Treatment Episode will only have one consultation. If, alternatively, you see a client six times before the treatment for the presenting problem is complete, then the “one” treatment episode will have “six” consultations. To access the clinical notes system in PPS, either select from the PPS Menu: Client – Consultation, or click Consultation on the PPS Task bar. You can select an appointment, or client record first if required to give immediate access to the consultation screen for that client.

Create
See: Add; Charge – Create

Daily Appointments List
The Daily Appointments List is a useful way of viewing all of today’s appointments (or appointments for a selected day) in a simple list. The list includes all of the basic appointment details (date, time, duration, client, etc.) as well as an indication of the appointment status (arrived, being seen, completed, DNA). In addition, you can also see if the appointment has been billed, and if clinical notes have been recorded. The Daily appointments list is accessed either from the PPS Menu: Appointments – Daily Appointments List, or by clicking Daily List on the PPS Task Bar. To change the date of the appointments displayed in the list, select a date from the calendar on the PPS Task Bar. You can also show the list for a selected practitioner only by selecting the required practitioner from the drop list in the top right corner of the screen. In addition to displaying appointments, the daily list will also show clinical notes records and billing details where these have been created and are not related to an appointment. The Daily List can be set to refresh automatically. This is useful when you are operating PPS on a network of more than one computer and another PPS use may be making updates to today’s details. To set the refresh interval, select from the PPS Menu: Tools – Appointments Diary Options, and set the Daily List Refresh Rate (leave the rate at zero for no refresh).

Details
This is a generic term used to describe the information stored in any particular part of PPS. For example Main Client Details is the information you enter to this screen. In addition, there are several “notes” type fields that allow you to enter further “free text” details against a record – these are also sometimes referred to as Details.

Diary
See: Appointments Diary

Include
This is a term used in the PPS Reports Wizard – on step 3 of the selections for your report. On most reports you can select to “include” a selection of details on the printed report. You can un-tick any items that you do not want to include. The “Include” options only apply when the report is printed or previewed – if you are exporting the report to a file or mail merge, then the “include” options do not apply.

Labels
Labels in PPS are Address labels that you can print and use on envelopes if you do not use window envelopes. Labels are an activity type. When you prepare a label, it can either be printed now or later. PPS Prints to either a dedicated label printer such as the DYMO LabelWriter™ or standard A4 label sheet layout which is 2 across by 8 down. The Avery™ label code for this style of label sheet is L7162. PPS has a label print spool that can be used to print a whole A4 sheet of labels at once, by accumulating individual labels gradually until a whole page is full. Alternatively you can also print a single label on an A4 sheet in any position, so you can run a single A4 sheet through your printer several times printing one or two labels in selected positions each time. To prepare a single label to print now or later, select from the PPS Menu: Activities – Prepare a Label. You can also print many labels at once by selecting “Labels” as the output from a PPS Report. To do this, select from the PPS Menu: Reports – PPS Reports & Mail Merge, then select a suitable report that will produce a list of client names and addresses to prepare labels for such as Client Lists. Run the report through the Report Wizard, and in the report output options select Main Merge. Then on the Mail Merge output screen select Labels. You can also print appointment details on a label when booking a new appointment.

List
List is the term used to describe information that either appears on the screen or on a report in rows and columns. The term List is also used in PPS as a list of items such as menu, or list of entries such as a look up table. See also: List style diary.

Move
See: Appointment - Move

Options
PPS has a screen on the PPS Tools menu called Options. This screen can be used to set up a wide variety of system settings that affect the way that PPS works. You can make your changes to these areas and press the OK or Apply button to save your changes. The Options screen has four tabs along the top: General, Custom Client Fields, Set Up Client Contacts, and Clinical Notes. See the entries under each of these sections for more details, for example Options – General.

Order
This term applies to the Order in which information is listed on the screen. Information in PPS is often listed in a “Grid” with rows and columns; you can often click on the column headings to change the order in which the information is displayed. There is also a Client Browse screen that includes an “order” selection to allow the client details to be displayed in a variety of orders such as Surname, etc.

Patient
See: Client

PPS
PPS is the acronym for “Private Practice Software”.

Practitioner
A practitioner in PPS is a system user. To add a practitioner to PPS, you need to add a new system user, and indicate that they are a practitioner as part of their user details. When a user is a practitioner, they appear on the list of practitioners to select to allocate to most PPS records. PPS allocates a practitioner to most types of records so that you can see which practitioner is responsible for that record, also you can break down most report in PPS by practitioner.

Profile
The Main Client Details screen in PPS includes a “Profile” section. This is where you store specific information about each client including their “source of introduction” and “occupation”. You can set up your own profile details. This allows you to specify your own field headings which suit the type of details you need to store suitable to your business area. To set up the client profile fields select from the PPS Menu: Tools – Options, and select the Custom Client Fields tab. see: Options – Custom Client Fields for more details.

Refresh
See: Client Log - Refresh; Appointments Diary - Refresh; Daily Appointments List - Refresh; Accounts Screen - Refresh

Reminders
See: Activities; Appointment - Reminders

Room
See: Treatment Room

Select
A term used when you choose something on the screen. Some PPS screens have a <Select> button, this normally means that you pick an option, or entry in a list, then click the <Select> button. This will “select” your chosen entry and proceed to the next screen, or return to the previous screen with your chosen entry selected.

Send a Message
See: Message

Set Up
See: Medical History – Setting Up; PPS – Setting Up; Custom Form – Maintenance; Users – Setting Up; Letterhead – Set Up

Status
See: Client Status

Time
See: Activities – Time; Appointments – Time

View Style
See: Appointments Diary – View Style

Week
See: Appointments Diary – Setting Up