The Clinical Screen

Just as importantly, you will have been introduced to the way in which Premvet 5 works - through prompt line commands and menu options.

In this section of the manual we will concern ourselves with how you can use Premvet 5 to charge your clients for the work you have completed on their behalf.

A natural way to start, then, is by introducing you to the Clinical Screen, where clinical work, diagnosis and payments are recorded. This chapter will show you the information available on the clinical screen and how to access it, so you are familiar with some basic commands before you learn how to add clinical work in the next chapter.

Chapter Contents

Clinical Screen

To access the clinical screen you must first bring up the record card relating to the client animal you wish to treat. You'll remember various different ways of doing this were discussed in Accessing A Record. Now choose the <C>lin option on the management record prompt line. The screen clears and the "short form" of the Clinical Screen is displayed. We'll discuss "short form" and "long form" in just a minute, but for now the screen you can see breaks down as follows:

• Transaction date
  This is the date the work was carried out on. It is usually the date that appears on the invoice.
• Details
  This can be a comment, diagnosis, payment, financial transaction or any other detail you may wish to record.
• Fees
  The fee component (exclusive of VAT) of the transaction or, in the case of a payment line, the amount of the payment made.
• Drugs
  As with fees above this is the drug component of the transaction, also exclusive of VAT.
• Balance
  The running balance inclusive of VAT.
• Analysis code
  Each clinical line is allocated an analysis code. Analysis codes help your practice to identify what procedures are being carried out and how regularly they occur. They are discussed in more detail in the analysis code section.
• Surgery where the work was done.
  If you have a branch surgery connected to the system, this will indicate at which branch the work was ENTERED.
• User's reference
  Your reference for the surgeon or lay staff this work is allocated to.

Clinical Prompt Line

From the Clinical Prompt Line you can select various options related to the clinical screen. Don't worry if some of the options seem a little confusing at the moment - we'll be covering them all through following chapters.

The default here is normally 'Quit', you can change this by setting Clinical_Default in params.txt to the option you require. If you want the system to cycle through a few options e.g. 1st default to 'Text', then 'Auto' and finally 'Quit' then set this to TAQ. As this may not apply to all users you can tell the system to ignore the setting (will default to Quit) by Access Permission 117.

Short form vs Long Form

When you choose to display the clinical screen, Premvet 5 assumes you are about to add new clinical work. To save you the time of wading through screen after screen of an animal's history, the system jumps to the last eight lines of the current clinical record, i.e. those we detailed at the start of this chapter (Transaction Date, Details, Fees, etc.). This is called the Short form of the clinical records. You can access the earlier information very easily and unlike other veterinary systems the historic information is kept for as long as you need it. It is up to the practice to decide when to archive historic data.

Listing clinical data (Long form)
To view the historic data (the Long form of the record) there are four options you can choose from the clinical prompt line:

1. Long
   The Long option will return you to a specified point of the animal's history, and then scroll through the information page by page. The Long option can also be used to alter the way the information is displayed and send the information to a printer.

   Once you have selected this option Premvet 5 prompts you with some additional choices:

   • Old - Starts the listing to include information that has been partially archived.
   • Normal - Displays the long version of the clinical record including the analysis code.
   • VAT - Shows the VAT amounts for each transaction instead of the analysis code.
   • Analysis - This will allow you to search all the transactions for a specific analysis code.

   The system then prompts you to: Enter date to start at or <S>tart [S] ........ If you press return you will be taken to the earliest clinical details on record. Otherwise you may enter a date and only clinical details entered after that date will be displayed.

   The system will than ask you whether you would like to display the records on screen or send them to a printer. If you are displaying the information on the screen you can press ESC to abort the listing or use the Up option to scroll back if required.

2. Up
   Use the Up command to scroll up the information one screen at a time. Every time 'U' is pressed the screen will go up. Press RETURN to go back down a screen. To exit this option either keep pressing RETURN until the last clinical details are visible, or press the ESC key to return directly to the short form.

3. Print
   This option stands for 'print' and sends a copy of the short form record card to a printer. This option also prints the help box described below.

4. Zero Prices
   The 'Z'option will print out the long listing without any financial information.

Species & Breed help box

You may notice on the right of the screen a small window giving you some of the management record details e.g. Species, Breed, Sex etc.

Species   : Canine
Breed     : Lab
Age/Sex   : 3 yr 1 mo / MN
Weight    : 1.50 kgs
Vacc.     : 05.01.89
Insured   : Pet Protect
ID: 00672341556

While entering an AP item on the clinical screen the breed box on the right of the screen will contains help on the questions. This has been made the default method of operation.

If you want to revert to the previous method then change

Menu -> General -> Params -> Misc -> 4 to a 3

Sort Records

An invisible option is available at the clinical record prompt which sorts the clinical records for that client into date order. This is accessible by the command 'Y'. If there are too many records for the sort to be performed in memory, then a disk-based sort takes place instead, which takes longer to do.

Time on Clinical Records

A switch which can be set in option menu allows a note of the time the line was entered onto the client's record to be shown in brackets in the date column every time the record is displayed (apart from the first record each day, which will record the date). If a transaction was entered at the same time as the line above, the information is not repeated.