The client preferences in PPS are designed to control the preferred method of contacting a client for various confirmations, reminders and mail shots that you may want to send out, be it e-mail, letter, SMS or as a simple reminder for yourself to telephone the client at a specific time and date.
Here is a brief rundown on what the 4 client contact options are:
Booking Confirmations
These are sent to the client immediately after booking the appointment.
Appointment Reminders
These are scheduled reminders that are sent so many days before the patient’s appointment upcoming appointment.
Appointment Follow-up Reminders
These can be scheduled several weeks or months after the appointment as a reminder for your client to book another appointment.
Marketing and Mail shots
Used to determine how we want to contact clients for mail shots - for example - by letter, email or both
Note: This guide will take you through mass editing all of your clients contact preferences to suit your general requirements; however individual clients can have their preferred contact methods edited at any time within the client details screen.
- The following global update method is used to change the preferences for all clients in the database in one go. Firstly you will need to go to your PPS Menu > Tools > Options > General System Options.
- From here you will need to select the ‘Set Up Client Preferences’ tab on the top right. You will then see the screen as shown in the picture below.
- In here you will have 4 rows for your various contact methods that PPS offers that have 8 columns overall.
- The first 4 columns are for the “Auto-Select” methods of contacting clients, which is designed to work in the way of firstly trying to contact a client via e-mail, and then via letter for instance. (So when sending an appointment reminder, the system will try and send an e-mail, but if that client doesn’t have an email address in client details, it will then try and print out a letter to be sent to the client if they have their address on PPS).
- The second 4 columns are for selecting the appropriate boxes for the “And / Or Always switch on” method, which equates to a simple ‘yes contact this client via this method’ if ticked. There are no preferred contact methods here. The example here being if a client can be contact via Letter and E-mail, the system will ask you how to you wish to contact the client.
- Once you’ve selected you preferred method of contact, click on Apply at the bottom of the screen, and once you do this the Update Now! button will be selectable, so click on this where you will then be greeted by 2 pop up messages, both confirming that you wish to action this change to all your client. Click on OK on both once you are sure you wish to update all your client records.
Note: Depending on the number of clients you have on your system, this update could either take seconds or minutes, so as a precaution make sure that you have 5/10 minutes spare on PPS as the system will be unavailable in this time on the PC that you are on.
- If you wish to update only a few clients manually, you can simply go to your client details screen and scroll down to your Preference section and tick the appropriate boxes here.
Note: You will need to have activity templates setup before you progress any further – if you have not used the templates that are required for this section before, please refer to the Activity Templates guide found on the support pages of the website.
- This next step needs to be carried out to activate the confirmation and reminders system using the preferences that have now been setup.
- To setup Reminder options go to Tools > Options > Appointment Diary Options, then click on to the ‘Reminders’ tab.
- In this screen you will have 4 sections. The first 3 are what we need to concentrate on, as these 3 deal with the Booking confirmations, Appointment reminders and Follow-up Reminders respectively.
- In the Appointment Booking Confirmation section, you can check the tick box to enable this feature firstly; you can then choose which activity template you will use to contact your clients. Finally you will have the ‘how to process’ row, which shows letters, e-mails, SMS messages and telephone sections.
Note:
Disabled- This doesn’t use the activity template for this method of confirmation.
Prompted - Prompts you if you want to create the confirmation or not, then asks you if you want to print e-mail the document.
Automatic - Automatically creates the confirmation and then asks you if you want to print/send e-mail.
- In the Appointment Reminders section, firstly you have the option of ticking the box to enable reminders. You can then schedule when to send a reminder depending on when the appointments has been made in the future and also how many days before the appointment you want to send them the actual reminder.
- You can then also choose to move the reminder based on when the reminder falls on at the weekend as well as selecting which template to choose.
- Finally it will ask which of your PPS system users wish to be prompted and if the process is going to be prompted or automatic. Generally it’s best for all your users to be prompted, but if you just want one system user to have this notification, select them in here.
- Lastly we have the Appointment Follow-up Reminders Section. You can simply tick the box to enable this feature, decide who gets prompted and how this gets processed as with the above methods.
- To test your new setup to make sure everything is working, you can book a new appointment in as normal, and then once the appointment has been finalised, PPS will either automatically send the booking confirmation, or you will see the screen below as per your setup with either automatic or prompted processes:
- Once you have decided to send your confirmation (via the above e-mail method or your own type of confirmation) you will then be prompted by the reminders screens.
- If you have automatic appointment reminders setup, you will see the above box that notifies you that it has been setup.
- If you chose to be prompted you will receive the following message asking to click either Yes or No for setting up a scheduled reminder.
- Once the appointment reminders are due, upon next logging into the system the user may be prompted saying there are outstanding activities to be completed if any are due. These activities can be accessed from your PPS Menu > Activities > Process Outstanding Activities.
- You will then have your list of various activities. You can click on any of the ones embolden and in blue. This will take you to the process screen.
- From here you can decided if you wish to click either Process or Dismiss each activity or Auto-Process all of your activities in the list.
Action
See: Personal Action 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 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. 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 Database
The PPS Database can be stored in a separate location on your computer/network from the main PPS application files. This would apply to a PPS installation on a network where the PPS Application files are installed onto each computer, and the database is located centrally on the network. There is the option to change the database location as part of the initial installation of PPS, and there is also a separate “database only” installation available if the database is to be installed onto a computer such as a server where PPS will not be used on that computer – servers often reside in a “back office” and are not used as a desktop computer. 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 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 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. 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. Patient
See: Client PPS
PPS is the acronym for “Private Practice Software”. 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. Reminders
See: Activities; Appointment - Reminders 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 Time
See: Activities – Time; Appointments – Time Weekend
See: Reminders
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