Appointment With
The practitioner is normally selected for you based upon the column on the diary you have clicked to add the new appointment to. This list is dependent on which 'System Users' are marked as a practioner within your System User Set Up from the Tools menu.
Location, Treatment Room and Equipment
are all selectable - The selections are controlled via the Look Up Tables area under 'Appointment Diary Tables'.
Date, Time and Duration
The appointment itself is also controlled here. Opening up a new appointment directly from an available time slot on the appointments diary will pre-emptively fill in this information.
Search for Surname
is used to enter in part of the surname of an existing client, or just use the Search button to select the client required by typing in all or part of their surname or clicking on the graphic image of a person to insert the client you currently have selected highlighted.
Tip: If you have a client with a common surname that lists dozens of clients, you can also search on firstname in the search box. If searching for "Fred Smith" in the surname box you can search for "smith f" or "smi fre" for more accurate results.
Appointment Types
This is a list that you can set up under “tools – look-up tables – appointments diary tables”. Your entries on this list can describe the type of appointment and can be shown on the diary alongside the client name. These entries can also pre-determine the duration of the appointment, the charge/fee, and the display colour on the diary. You can also set up specific templates for each appointment type to use for booking confirmations, follow-up reminders and clinical notes custom forms. Using this list is also be a useful way to breakdown your appointments reports – for example to show revenue by appointment type.
Treatment Episodes
An existing episode is chosen from the drop down menu. They are also created here if no active treatment episodes already exists. This is a useful area to keep track of which appointments regard which treatments the client is currently undertaking.
Notes
The notes text box is here to record any extra details about the client, which can optionally be shown on various PPS reports. The clients current account balance just under the text notes box is shown for information purposes as well.
Status tick boxes
are automatically selected throughout the clients appointment stages. These can optionally be ticked and un-ticked manually if required. The 'New Client' tickbox is selected if you create a new client from the 'New Appointment' screen. Marking an appointment as DNA will also allow you to re-open the appointment slot for another client to use within the diary
The OK button creates the appointments on the diary after a client is selected and any additional fields are filled in. Repeating a series of future appointments is also an option by using the repeat button in the bottom right.
Tip: PPS has the ability to automatically send the client an instant SMS message to confirm the details of the appointment just booked. In addition, PPS has a further ability to schedule an SMS reminder for the client a few days before the appointment. This can also be done via letter, e-mail or Telephone reminder. Add
Look this up under the type of new record you want to add – e.g. Client - Add or Appointment - Add 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.
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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.
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See below for further detailed information relating to the various Appointments Diary functions in PPS. Breakdown
This is a term used on all PPS Reports. When you run a report, you can select to breakdown the results into groups or categories. Most PPS reports allow you to breakdown to two levels. The breakdown category will have it’s own heading and sub-totals on the report. For example, if you select to breakdown your report by Practitioner, then each practitioner will have their own heading on the report, with the report results shown for that practitioner underneath the heading. At the end of the report results for that Practitioner, there will be a sub-total line showing totals for that Practitioner. Typically an accounts/revenue report could be broken down by Month then Practitioner. This means that each Month will have its own section on the report (and its own sub-total line) and then within each month, the report will show one section per practitioner. Using a breakdown on most reports is optional. 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.
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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.
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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! Clinical Notes
The Clinical Notes facility in PPS is available in the “Professional” version of PPS. This includes screens to record your Clinical Notes, manage Treatment Episodes, complete specific forms (Custom Forms) including body charts and your own questionnaires, etc. All Clinical Notes are structured into the framework of Treatment Episodes. Although some of you may be used to slightly different terminology, PPS uses “Treatment Episode” to define a specific course of treatment for a specific condition, and “Consultation” as the individual treatment sessions/consultations. Therefore each time you see a client – whether or not it is an initial consultation/assessment or a follow up treatment – this is known as a “Consultation”. You can have more than one current Treatment Episode per client if required. When you select to record clinical notes, PPS checks to see if there are any current (not completed) Treatment Episodes for the client. If there is more than one, you can choose which one to record your consultation notes for. Otherwise a new Treatment Episode will be started, and this consultation will be consultation number one for the new Treatment Episode. When you complete the consultation, you can enter set up the full details of the Treatment Episode including the name, number of consultations required, diagnosis details etc. See: Treatment Episode for more details. For more detailed information about recording clinical notes and consultations, see: various entries under Consultation and Custom Forms. Create
See: Add; Charge – Create Custom Forms
See: Custom Form 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 DNA
PPS uses the acronym DNA (did not attend) as a generic term for all appointments where the client did not attend. Some of you may only be used to using the term DNA for certain types of “failures to attend” but PPS uses DNA for all types. You can mark an appointment as DNA on the diary. This then allows several further options: You can allocate a Reason for Non-attendance, create a charge for the non-attendance, and select to Re-Open the appointment slot. For more details, see: Appointment – DNA. Equipment
This is one of the PPS Look up Tables used on the appointments diary. You can assign equipment to an appointment. This is entered on the appointment details screen. Equipment is a look up table and you set up the entries yourself. This can be used to indicate if special practice equipment needs to be used for an appointment. To set up your standard list of equipment items by select from the PPS Menu: Tools – Look up Tables, and select Equipment from the Appointments Diary Tables section. You do not have to use the Equipment entry when booking appointments if you do not need to. 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. Location
A Location in PPS is a physical clinic location. Older versions of PPS referred to treatment rooms as locations. Now Treatment Rooms are an additional field of information. You can set up locations to use in your PPS Appointments Diary. You can set up your diary for diary users/practitioners to be scheduled to work either in specific treatment rooms and/or locations on various days during the week. You do not have to use “Location” if you only work from one location. To set up locations, select from the PPS Menu: Tools – Look Up Tables, and select Location from the Appointments Diary Tables section. Here you can set up your various locations, and nominate a colour to each location to make each location clearly identifiable in the diary. Look Up Tables
Look up Tables are used in PPS to control the entries that are allowed in certain fields. This means that you can restrict what values are input to just those that you want recorded. For example, when adding a new appointment, the “Appointment Type” look up table can contain entries such as “Initial Assessment”, “New Patient” or “Hydrotherapy”. This helps when running reports as you can select to break down the results of your report by the look up table entry thus minimising the number of different entries (especially slight variations of spellings!).
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Some Look Up tables will store additional default values. For example the “Appointment Type” table can optionally have a Charge Codes associated with each entry. When the selected entry is used for an appointment, the charge code will be automatically selected for you when you create the charge for the appointment.
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Look Up Tables are set up and maintained using the PPS Menu: Tools – Look Up Tables.
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You can control which of your PPS users has access to setting up and maintaining Look Up Tables as part of the PPS Access Control system.
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Also see the entry under the name of each Look Up Table e.g. Occupation Notes
See: Client - Default Notes Entry Open
Some screens in PPS have an “Open” button on the toolbar, this is very similar to the Modify button as it will “open” the selected record for “modification”. 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. Reminders
See: Activities; Appointment - Reminders Repeat
See: Appointment – Repeat; Diary Week – Repeat; Block Appointment - Repeat Reports
PPS includes many different reports that you can run that present information accumulated from various parts of the system. There are two main reports options: Summaries and Statistics, and PPS Reports and Mail Merge. In addition to these two main options, there is a variety of other print-outs that you can produce from PPS that are not included in the category of reports. These include: Printing the Diary, Client Details, Medical History and Clinical Notes. You can access the PPS reports options from the PPS Menu: Reports. For more details about the Statistics & Summaries type reports, see: Statistics & Summaries. When you select the PPS Reports & Mail Merge option, a reports selection screen appears – this screen is divided into the various categories of reports that you can run. Most reports (certainly client-based reports) can also be used for mail merge purposes. Select a report from any of the categories and use either the Run option (see: Reports – Run) or the Open option (see: reports – Open). When you select Open, you will be guided through the Report Wizard (see: Report Wizard) to allow you to make your specific selections for the report before choosing a report output option (see: Reports – Report Output). See also: various entries in this reference guide under Reports for further details. For details of individual reports, see: the entry under the report name, for example Charges Report or Aged Debtors Report. Revenue
All PPS Accounts records concerned with billing, are part of your practice Revenue. In PPS terms this equates to Charges Invoices and Payments. All these constitute your practice revenue. Because each of these three records has their own date, you can view your revenue using PPS reports in a variety of ways this does mean that running a Charges report, Invoice report and Payments report for the same month will not necessarily show the same revenue figures because the Charge date may not be the same as the Invoice date, or the Payment date. Where the term “Revenue” is used in PPS – for example on the Statistics & Summaries screen, then PPS will explain which figures it will use for revenue – in this case Charges. Room
See: Treatment Room Search
You can search for various records in PPS: Clients, Appointments, Third-Party contacts etc. Some screens include a <Search> button on the toolbar. The main PPS Client Search screen includes options to search on a variety of fields: for example Surname. This screen can be accessed from the Search Button on any of the client screens (main details, log, browse) or by clicking “Search” on the PPS Task Bar. The Search screen allows you to enter all or part of a value into a selected field, then when you press Enter a list of results that match what you have typed in is displayed. The most common information to search on is Surname. In the Surname field on the search screen, it is possible to enter all or part of the surname followed by a space, then all or part of the client’s First Name. This way you can narrow down your search results – useful with popular surnames. For example, you can search for Joe Smith simply by entering SMI J in the Surname field and pressing enter. All clients whose surname starts with SMI and whose First Name starts with J will be listed.
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You can search for existing Client Appointments or Free Appointment Slots using the <Search> button on the Appointments Diary – see: Appointments Diary – Search for more details. 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. Set Up
See: Medical History – Setting Up; PPS – Setting Up; Custom Form – Maintenance; Users – Setting Up; Letterhead – Set Up SMS Message
PPS has the option to send an SMS message (or schedule one to be sent) as part of the PPS Activities system. SMS Messages are sent either by directly posting the message to an internet web site, or by sending a specially formatted e-mail to a preconfigured e-mail account; the provider of this e-mail account simply converts your e-mail message into an SMS message and sends it to the required recipient’s mobile phone. This facility requires that you have an account with a third-party SMS messaging provider – this option is available on the Tools menu in PPS. There is a small charge per message sent (the charge is similar or less than sending an SMS from your phone). Status
See: Client Status Surname
See: Client - Surname Time
See: Activities – Time; Appointments – Time Tools Menu
Options on the Tools menu are listed alphabetically in this reference guide under each Section e.g. Look Up Tables.
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