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Third Party Contact List
PPS provides the ability to associate a variety of third-party contacts with each client. These contacts are stored in a separate list and are grouped into contact types such as Doctors, Insurance Companies, Health Authority, etc. The purpose of associating third-party contacts is that they can be used to send letters/e-mails to on behalf of the client, and also used for billing purposes.
Purpose of Third Parties
If sending a letter regarding the client, the letter can include name/address merge fields for a third party contact type such as Doctors name/address. This means that when you send the letter, the doctor associated with the selected client will be the recipient of the letter. If the client does not have a doctor associated with them, then you can select one as you are sending the letter, and select to “always associate this doctor with this client” for future letters. Alternatively you can associate the third party with the client (read on for further details).
Each client can have an unlimited number of different types of third party contacts associated with them.
Adding or Modifying a Third Party - Personal Details
Each third party compromises of three sections. The first section is for the unique name of the third party, for instance the name, salutation and title of a Doctor or the contact name and department of a contact at an Insurance Company.
Adding or Modifying a Third Party - Company Details
The company details will hold the company name, address and contact numbers of the third party itself. When entering the name of the company, the system will do an auto-search to see if the company already exists on the system or not - if no matches are found, then the details can be entered.
If details of a similar company are found, then you have the choice of continuing to enter in the new details - however if adding in a new personal contact to a company that already exists, then the existing company can be selected, which will auto-complete the company details section with any existing information.
Adding or Modifying a Third Party - Account Settings
Each individual third party can have additional prompts and notes assigned, which will view on the appropriate account screens. There are also further billing options selectable regarding credit limits and warnings based on the specific third party contact.
Adding or Modifying a Third Party – Contact Preferences
The contact preferences screen allows you to assign default appointment confirmation/DNA templates to the third party. When booking or cancelling an appointment for a client (via the treatment episode) who is associated with this third party, an email will be sent to the third party who is paying for this particular appointment.
Associating Third Parties with Clients
This can be done in the ‘contacts’ section of the client details screen by clicking ‘add a contact’. You can then search for an existing third party or create a new one by clicking the 'house' button. 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. 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! Company
Company is the “company name” element of a Third Party contact (as opposed to contact name). Third-party Contacts are individuals or organisations that can be associated with clients, for example Insurance Companies. You are able to set up your profile of third-party contacts yourself using the option from the PPS Menu: Tools – Options, and selecting the Client Contacts tab. Each type of contact (there are 9 in total) can be referred to via contact name, and Company name. An example is a Law Firm, where Contact Name would be an individual lawyer or solicitor, and the company would be the law firm. 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. 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. 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. Doctors
See: Contacts (Third-Party) – Contact Types; Client –Third-Party Contacts EMail
E-Mails in PPS are part of the PPS Activities system. You can send E-Mails directly from within PPS. This is dependant upon your computer being configured to use Microsoft® Outlook or Outlook Express to send e-mails. To send an e-mail, either select from the PPS Menu: Activities – Send an E-Mail, or click on Send an E-Mail on the PPS Task Bar. You can also select the <New> button from the Activities List. The Send an E-Mail screen allows you to select either a client (the client you are currently working with is automatically selected) or a third party. You can type in the subject and body of the e-mail message, and you can attach a document to the e-mail. Like all PPS Activity records, the e-mail can be scheduled to send later if required by setting the due date/time.
See also: Client – E-Mail Address 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. Notes
See: Client - Default Notes Entry 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. PPS
PPS is the acronym for “Private Practice Software”. Salutation
In PPS, this is how you refer to someone in a letter. This applies to Clients and Third-Party contacts. You can enter the salutation on the Main Client Details screen for each of your clients – some clients you may prefer to use their title and surname and others that you know better you may use their first name. The same applies to Third-Party contacts where an individual’s name is used (instead of just a Company name). You can use “Salutation” as a “merge field” when setting up or sending letters. There is a Salutation field available for Clients, and one for each Third-Party contact types (insurance companies, clubs, etc.) When a letter is printed using the Salutation merge field, the field is replaced with the Salutation entry, if no entry is made into the Salutation field, then the Client Title and Surname is used to replace the merge field. 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. Treatment Episode
All clinical notes in PPS are stored within the framework of Treatment Episodes; each time you see a client, this is a Consultation – one or more Consultations form a Treatment Episode. This allows you to see a client several times within the same Treatment Episode. Depending upon the nature of your business, it may be the case that each time you see a client this is a separate treatment episode, so the episode is “Started” and “Completed” all within the same consultation. It is possible to undertake more than one treatment episode for a client at the same time. If a client is currently in a treatment episode when you start a new consultation, you can select to start a new treatment episode from the Consultation Screen. If a client has more than one current treatment episode, then when you start a consultation, you can select which treatment episode that this consultation is for. A Treatment Episode in PPS includes a range of details that you can enter to give you a wide range of options for your reporting and statistics analysis. In addition to the Start and End dates of an episode, you can also categorise your diagnosis, treatment, outcome and discharge details, as well as entering certain information about the presenting problem such as Acute/Chronic, Time Present, etc. This is designed to assist you with your follow up consultations, as these details are displayed at the top of the Consultation screen while you are entering your consultation notes.
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