Entering clinical work

Before we get into the details of adding new clinical work to a client's record, we should take some time out to consider how the clinical screen works in conjunction with other parts of Premvet 5 to provide you with a total practice management solution.

First of all, let's imagine you've just undertaken a consultation for a client in which you diagnosed an illness, performed a common procedure and prescribed some drugs for the animal in question. How has this consultation made an impact on your practice?

Most obviously, the consultation has taken up some of your time; during which you've been unavailable to other clients and your practice overheads - electricity, heating, staffing, etc. - have continued to mount up. You may want your client to meet these costs via your consultation fee. Secondly, you'll want to record your diagnosis to make life easier when your client returns. Thirdly, you performed a common procedure. For arguments sake, let's say it was an X-ray. Within your practice you'll probably already have worked out the cost of a standard X-ray which takes into account the film used, average time and development costs. You'll want to add this cost to the client's bill. Finally, you prescribed some drugs for the animal. The price of these drugs may remain the same over long periods, and you need to add this cost to your client's bill. Selling the drugs also impacts the stock levels within your practice and perhaps it's time you ordered a new batch to replenish a dwindling supply. You may wish to produce appropriate labels at this time.

Billing, Stock-Levels and Automatic Pricing.
How will Premvet 5 help you in the example above? By automating the billing process and taking into account the practice-wide implications of each consultation, Premvet 5 will save you time and ensure conformity throughout the practice.

In Automatic Pricing the system provides you with an easy way of costing out common procedures and quickly adding them to a client's bill. You define Automatic Pricing items, and assign each item a code. Then whenever you need to add that item to a client's bill you key in the code and Premvet 5 adds the item and associated description to the client's record, calculates the new bill total and amends your stock levels automatically.

Similarly, the system can automatically add drug fees to your client's bill, amend your stock and issue stock warnings where necessary.

We'll cover exactly how you go about configuring Premvet 5 to complete these tasks in this and later chapters. For now it's important you should know that Premvet 5 uses the information you provide on the clinical screen to accomplish a range of tasks that will help you to improve efficiency within your practice.

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