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Activities -> Send a Letter or Task Bar -> Send a Letter or Activities -> Activities List
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1.
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Select the person responsible for the letter by clicking <Down Arrow> and selecting the relevant entry.
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2.
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If the letter is going to be sent at a later date, select the Due Date and Time. Alternatively you can click <Due In …> next to the time and specify a time period. For example: 1 week, 3 months etc. Your selection here will update the Due Date and Time.
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3.
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Optionally select a practitioner associated with the letter.
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4.
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Select who the letter is for. You can select a client in the normal way or select a third party by clicking the radio button and entering the name of the third party in much the same way as selecting the client. You can also select that the letter is not going to either a client or third party. Any contact telephone numbers relating to the client or third party will be displayed.
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5.
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Enter the subject of the letter. If left blank it will use the name of the selected letter. This subject will show in the Activities List, Task List and Client Log.
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6.
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If you are going to use a standard letter template click the Template <down arrow>. Select the appropriate letter from the list.
This list has two columns. The first column shows the name of the letter template and the second column show the name of the document if a Word document.
If you don’t wish to use a letter template, leave blank.
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7.
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Enter any other relevant information about the letter to be sent in the Notes field.
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8.
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Choose to include the activity in the Task List and/or when printing out the diary.
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9.
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Although you can manually enter an Outcome and Completed details, these are entered automatically when sending the letter.
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10.
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Click <Send> to open the Letter Editor screen or Word dependant on the letter template chosen.
PPS Letter Template
The contents of the letter are displayed. Before printing the letter you can change the text and also introduce further merge fields by clicking <Fields>. Click <Print> to print the letter.
Word Letter Template
Word is opened showing the contents of the letter ready to be modified if necessary and printed.
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11.
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Click <Yes> to confirm that the letter has been completed (printed).
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12.
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The letter template may have a follow up activity associated with it. (See Setting Up PPS -> Standard Letters.) Click <Yes> to create the follow up activity.
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13.
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Finally click <Close>.
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Activities
Activities in PPS are a way of keeping a record of contacts, telephone calls, letters, etc. that you have with your Clients or Third-Party contacts. Activities can all have a specific PPS User, and Practitioner assigned to them, and can be scheduled for completion in the future or immediately. Activities appear in the Client Log for each client, as well as on the Activities List and the Task List. A System of colours is used to denote activities that are: Due – Green; Not yet due – Orange; Completed – Purple and Overdue (task list only) – Red.
See Also: Activities – Activity Types Change
See: Cash Desk; Modify 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 Create
See: Add; Charge – Create 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. Letters
Letters are an activity type in PPS. You can select at any time to send a letter to either a client or a third-party. You can send a letter either by selecting from the PPS Menu: Activities – Send a Letter, or by selecting “Send a Letter” from the PPS Task Bar. In addition you can also select to send a letter as part of your clinical notes recording. When you send a letter, you have the choice of either selecting a standard letter from your list of standard PPS letters (see: Standard Letters), or by simply typing your letter using the PPS letter editor before printing and sending. Letters can either be sent now or scheduled to be sent in the future. If you are using Microsoft® Word to print your letters, then your list of standard letters (which can include very simple templates that simply have the client’s address/salutation details at the top) will include letters that you have set up in Word. If you are sending a letter as part of a Mail Merge output from a PPS Report, then this will be a PPS letter. To do a mail merge using a Word letter, you will have to produce a “File” output from the PPS mail merge output screen, and do the mail merge separately and completely in Word. 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. Log
See: Client Log. 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”. Outcome
When completing a Treatment Episode as part of your clinical notes records, you can enter Outcome details. This can be useful for reporting purposes to help analyse the type of problems you are treating. The Outcome will normally describe the clinical outcome to your treatment and will be an entry such as: “Maintenance Achieved”, or “Problem resolved”. There is a “Outcome Codes” table where you can set up your standard list of Outcome entries. To set up this table, select from the PPS Menu: Tools – Look Up Tables, and select the Outcome table from the Clinical Notes section. To make an Outcome entry as part of your clinical notes, from the PPS Consultation screen either use the <Update> button towards the top of the screen – this updates the Treatment Episode details for this consultation, or when completing the consultation enter the Outcome details in the Treatment Episode details screen (can be accessed using the <More> button in section 1) of the Consultation Complete screen. The Outcome can be selected as a Breakdown option on many reports – especially clinical notes type reports. 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. PrintYou can print various types of information in PPS including client details, clinical notes, Invoices, letters, and a wide variety of reports. All printing in PPS is done using your standard Windows printer driver for your selected printer. Many screens in PPS have a <Print> button that is used to print details for that part of the system. See also: Reports – Report Output. Printing
See: Print 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 Letter
See: Letter Task Bar
The PPS Task Bar is a tool bar that is positioned down the left hand side of the main PPS screen. It contains a calendar that can be used to navigate the Diary and the Daily List, and has quick access to various parts of PPS via Icons, headings and Prompts that can be clicked with the mouse. If your screen resolution is too small, then the icons are removed and just the Headings and prompts remain. You can switch the task bar on and off by selecting from the PPS menu: View – Task Bar. Time
See: Activities – Time; Appointments – Time Week
See: Appointments Diary – Setting Up Word
See: Microsoft® Word
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