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.
Later in this guide we will also take you through the specific areas that will require to be filled in if you are using the treatment episode screen so that you can then run reports and statistics for your insurance company’s tender processes.
- When creating or selecting a treatment episode, there are two ways to do this. Firstly is to select the “Treatment Episode” dropdown menu from the add/modify appointment screen and select the “Create New or Select Another...” option as show below.
- Or select the screen directly PPS by going to the PPS Menu > Client > Treatment Episodes whereby you will come across the following screen;
- Complete the consultation by clicking F12 - Consultation Complete or by pressing the F12 button on your keyboard. The consultation details will be saved and displayed in the consultation history in the bottom half of the screen.
- The Treatment Episode Details screen is then displayed. Here you can change the practitioner responsible for the treatment, name the treatment episode to something specific, select a start date if this is different from today, enter a referral date, source and also the referral contact.
- You can also allocate a referral letter and either send it now or schedule it to be sent at a later date.
- In the 2nd tab of the Episode Details entitled “Clinical Details” you can enter additional information about the treatment such as the objectives of the treatment you’re giving and the area of treatment. It’s self explanatory to a degree, however the more information that goes into this area, the more specific you can be on reporting later on and of course your client history.
- You can choose to automatically display the Treatment Episode screen (in order to make any updates) after each consultation has been completed by ticking the ‘Always Show this screen….’ box in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. Click Save to save the new treatment episode.
- Once a treatment episode has been created for the client you can update the details later, when entering subsequent consultations, by clicking Update.
- You will then be greeted with the familiar Treatment Episode screen.
- You can then click on Save to save your changes to the treatment episode once you are done updating.
- A treatment episode is completed by either entering details in the bottom section of a Treatment Episode or from within the ‘F12 - Consultation Completed’ screen.
- You can enter the outcome, discharge status and treatment end date. You can also allocate a discharge letter and either send it now or schedule it to be sent at a later date. Click Save to complete the treatment episode. The treatment end date will default to this final consultation date.
- Once you have completed the treatment episode by inputting a treatment end date, you will be shown the above consultation completed screen. In here you can create your charges you wish to raise, and then either decide on continuing the treatment if this is required, or completing the treatment is your patient is fixed.
- To continue the treatment, simply state how many more consultations may be required, optionally select the next charge code to automatically display for when you complete their next consultation, and then click on Treatment Continues.
- If there is no more treatment needed, then simply click on Treatment Completed. The outcome/code and discharge status will automatically appear if it has been selected from the Treatment Episode Screen.
- When a treatment episode is complete, you have the option of marking the client status as “Inactive”. This can be a useful indicator to use for reports, where only your “Active” clients are then the ones you are currently treating.
Bupa and PPP have recently requested information to be shown on invoices, and also statistics to be sent to them via the reporting features of PPS. Please see the fields below (which have been inputted with text) that these insurance companies will require to see from report statistics.
- Billing / Admin Details
- Clinical Details
- PPS has reporting features on treatment episodes and consultation statistics and information which can be accessed from the PPS Menu > Reports > Reports & Mail Merge area.
Add
Look this up under the type of new record you want to add – e.g. Client - Add or Appointment - Add Allocate
See: Payments - Allocating 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 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. Code
See: Charge – Code; Diagnosis Code; Outcome Code 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. 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 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. Diagnosis
When starting a new Treatment Episode as part of your clinical notes records, you can enter Diagnosis details. This can be useful for reporting purposes to help analyse the type of problems you are treating. There is a “Diagnosis Codes” table where you can set up your standard list of Diagnosis entries. To set up this table, select from the PPS Menu: Tools – Look Up Tables, and select the Diagnosis table from the Clinical Notes section. To make a Diagnosis 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 diagnosis details in the Treatment Episode details screen (can be accessed using the <More> button in section 1) of the Consultation Complete screen. The Diagnosis can be selected as a Breakdown option on many reports – especially clinical notes type reports. Discharge Status
When completing a Treatment Episode as part of your clinical notes records, you can enter Discharge Status details. This can be useful for reporting purposes to help analyse the type of problems you are treating and their outcome. The Discharge Status will normally be an entry such as: “Treatment Completed”, or “Referred on for alternative treatment”. There is a “Discharge Status” table where you can set up your standard list of Discharge entries. To set up this table, select from the PPS Menu: Tools – Look Up Tables, and select the Discharge Status table from the Clinical Notes section. To make an Discharge 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 Discharge Status details in the Treatment Episode details screen (can be accessed using the <More> button in section 1) of the Consultation Complete screen. The Discharge Status can be selected as a Breakdown option on many reports – especially clinical notes type reports. Form
See: Custom Form History
See: Medical History Mail Merge
A mail merge is when you want to send a standard letter to several of, or all your clients in one go. You can produce a Mail Merge in PPS using PPS Reports. Most PPS reports have Mail Merge as one of the output options. As an example, you can use the Client List Report to produce a mail merge. This means that instead of printing your list of clients, the same list is used as the names/addresses list to merge with a standard letter to send to each client included on the report. This gives you great flexibility for producing mail merges, as it means that you can manipulate the selections and criteria for your report first to produce a very precise list of clients to be included in the mail merge. For example, you can select to write to clients you have recorded as having a certain pre-existing condition such as diabetes, or all Female clients within a certain age range and so on, giving you great opportunities to send fairly specific targeted mailings to chosen groups of your clients. You can also use the mail merge feature to send bulk e-mails to your clients using the same mail merge options. To produce a mail merge, select from the PPS Menu: Reports – PPS Reports & Mail Merge, then select a report to run that will give you the results you need for your mail merge, for example Client List report. Use the report wizard to make any specific selections for your report, for example “clients who you last saw more than six months ago” can be selected using “Last occurrence” on step 1, and a date range of “From” date=blank and “To” date = the date as of six months ago. When you have finished your selections, click <Finish>, then on the Report Output screen click <Mail Merge>. Then on the Mail Merge output screen you have the option to either select Letters & E-Mail where you can use the PPS Letter editor to send a standard PPS letter to your clients included in the report, or select to produce a File which you can use with another mail merge program such as Microsoft Word. Alternatively, you can use Labels to prepare a mailing label for each client in your list also. Modify
This is the term used throughout PPS to “change” any of your existing records. PPS has buttons on many screens with a <Modify> prompt. Clicking this button will normally take you onto a further screen that allows you to modify the selected details. For more information about modifying various types of record in PPS, see the “modify” entry under the various section of this help guide, for example Invoices – Modify, Appointments – Modify, etc. 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. 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. 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. 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. Referral
This is a Look up Table that is used on the Treatment Episode details. The list can be used to help you categorise your sources of referral for each treatment episode in order to make your clinical notes reports more meaningful. You can set up your list of referral sources by selecting from the PPS Menu: Tools – Look up Tables, and selecting Referral from the Clinical Notes Tables section. You do not have to use the Referral entry on your Treatment Episode details if you do not want to. The Referral entry selected for each treatment episode is stored separately to the Source of Introduction on the Main Client Details screen. This is so that you can not only monitor where your clients initially heard about your clinic from , but also where your repeat business comes from. 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. Save
PPS Uses a <Save> button on many screens. This will save the updates that you have made to this screen and store them permanently in your database. One some screens the <Save> button will also close the screen. 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. State
See: County Statistics
See: Statistics & Summaries; Reports – Statistics Reports Status
See: Client Status Time
See: Activities – Time; Appointments – Time 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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