Administering OpenVPMS

This section includes things that are not done using the OpenVPMS web application.

mysqldump -u <username> --password=<password> --single-transaction --quick --extended-insert --add-locks --result-file=<dumpfile> openvpms

mysqldump -u <username> --password=<password> ... openvpms > E:\backups\opvdump.sql

mysql -u <username> -p openvpms < <dumpfile>

set DSTAMP=%date:~6,4%-%date:~3,2%-%date:~0,2%

net stop "Apache Tomcat 6.0 Tomcat6"
net stop "MySQL55"

sleep 10

ren C:\openvpms\data\mysql-slow.log %DSTAMP%-mysql-slow.log
ren C:\openvpms\data\mysql-slow.log %DSTAMP%-mysql-error.log
ren "C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 6.0\logs\openvpms.log" %DSTAMP%-openvpms.log
ren "C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 6.0\logs\openvpms-full.log" %DSTAMP%-openvpms-full.log

..... other stuff to backup database etc

net start "MySQL55"
net start "Apache Tomcat 6.0 Tomcat6"

exit

Appointment Reminders

OpenVPMS can send SMS reminders for upcoming appointments, automatically or manually.

To do this:

1. The Practice must have a Mail Server configured

The SMS gateways supported by OpenVPMS use email, so a Mail Server must be configured on the Practice.

2. The Practice must have SMS configured

3. An Appointment Reminder SMS Template must be configured

Reminder templates can be linked to the Practice and/or Practice Location. If a template is linked to a Practice Location, it will be used in preference to any linked to the Practice.

4. Schedules must be configured to send appointment reminders

This is done be selecting the Send Appointment Reminders flags for each Schedule that may send appointment reminders

5. Appointment Types must be configured to send appointment reminders

This is done be selecting the Send Appointment Reminders flags for each Appointment Type that may send appointment reminders

6. Customers must be able to receive SMS messages

This is done by selecting Allow SMS on their phone contact. If the customer has multiple phone contacts with Allow SMS set, then the preferred one will be used, and if none are preferred, then the first one created.

7. The Appointment Reminder Sender can be configured

This is required to send reminders automatically.

If you do not configure this (or create the sender job, but deactivate it) then appointment reminders will not be sent automatically, but can still be sent manually via the Remind button in Workflow - Scheduling. Doing things this way allows you the convenience of automatically generating the SMS text, but because the text is generated and then displayed, and allows you to personalise the reminder if required. The date and time of sending the reminder will also be recorded against the appointment.

8. The Appointment itself must have its 'Send Reminder' box ticked

This will be automatically ticked for new appointments provided that the previous conditions are satisfied. However, if you have appointments created before the Appointment Reminders system was activated, then in order to enable the automatic sending of reminders for these, you will have to edit each appointment to tick the 'Send Reminder' box.

Correct 'patient added to wrong customer'

If you have a situation is which a patient was mistakenly added to the wrong customer some time ago and you need to currect the situation and keep the patient's medical history but move all financial transations involving the patient to the correct owner, then do as follows:

1. Reverse any transactions on the OLD Customer that involved the patient to be transferred....even if they included another pet from that customer's file.

2.  Reverse any payments associated with those invoices. If payments cannot be reversed that match the invoice total - create a REFUND of the correct payment type.

3. At this point the OLD customer balance should be the same before you started.

4. Transfer the Patient to the NEW(Correct) Customer.

5. At this point you have the history, patient and customer correct - you just need to fix the transaction history.

6.  If invoices that you reversed contained transactions that were still relevant to the OLD Customer, recreate these invoices and pay them using the same payment type you reversed.

7.  In the new Customer recreate the relevant invoice items you reversed from the old customer and pay them using the same payment method you either created the refund for OR reversed in step 2.  Adjust line item costs to be the same (if prices have risen).

8. Make notes on each new invoice about the actual date the transaction took place on - do the same for payments.

9. At this point both client Balances would be in theory either zero or reflect the balance before you started the process.

10. Run a balance check over each customer.

11. The TILL for this day will have a lot of transactions that don't really exist - but the reversals and payments should balance each other out, so the nett effect on the daily total should be zero.

Email Template Tips

The following are tips and tricks to make Email Templates that generate impressive looking emails.

Set the Content Type to Document, and if possible use an Open Office document for the Content. Avoid RTF and HTML content as these do not allow merging, and use Jasper Report (jrxml) content only if you need Jasper Reports abilities to run sub-reports. Avoid Microsoft Office content if possible, because although it does allow merging, it does not provide some of the Open Office facilities (such as conditional content).

When preparing the Open Office document, you need to be careful when you insert images.  You cannot simply inset the image, and you MUST use an image that resides on a publicly accessible website (so that the person who receives the email can access the images), and you MUST link to the image.

Thus, you insert the image, use Insert|Picture|From File... and enter the URL of the image, and ensure that the Link box is ticked - as follows:

Note that the easiest way of getting the image's URL is to open the web page where it is displayed and then right click on the image, then:

In Firefox, use Copy Image Location

In Chrome, use Copy Image Address

Having inserted your image, if you want to centre or right-align it then you must do as follows:

First right-click on the image and select Anchor|As Character:

Click just after the image - by default it is left aligned:

To centre or right-align, click the appropriate icon.

Finally, in normal use, it is quite common to use empty paragraphs to space between items (as has been done above). However, you will find that doing this leads to big gaps in the email text.  Just letting the paragraphs follow one after the other provides perfectly adequate spacing.

Hence, with an invoice cover-note like the following:

the generated email looks like:

Using spaces for spacing
If you have not played with HTML, you may not realise that if text in HTML documents contains multiple consecutive spaces, then these are replaced by a single space. More strictly, multiple whitespace characters are replaced by a single space.  Hence if you wish to space say two graphics apart by 3 spaces, then you cannot use space characters - instead you must use 'non-breaking space' characters.  In Open Office Writer and Microsoft Word you inject these using Ctrl-Shift-Space on a Windows machine or Option-Space on a Mac).

No gaps between paragraphs
The paragraph spacing used in Open Office Writer will be ignored. Hence if your text in Writer looks like:

then the email text will look like:

To bring the lines together, use 'New Lines' (Ctrl-Shift-Enter) instead, so that in Writer you have:

then the email text will look like:

Wrong font
There is a bug in Open Office 4.1.2 that results in a user field at the beginning of a paragraph being given no font specification and thus shows up as (the default) Times.

That is, if in Writer you have:

then the email text will look like:

Looking closely you will see that although the 'Regards' has font Arial, that for Dr Crossling has font Times.

If you change the paragraph mark after the Regards, to a new line, ie like:

then the email text will look like:

HL7 Laboratories

Overview

This page describes how to configure OpenVPMS to interface with an HL7 laboratory such as IDEXX LabLink. For an overview of HL7 in OpenVPMS, see Concepts - HL7.

Configuration

To configure OpenVPMS to interface with an HL7 laboratory the following steps must be performed:

1. Configure an HL7 MLLP Sender, to send HL7 messages to the laboratory

2. Configure an HL7 MLLP Receiver, to receive HL7 messages from the laboratory

3. Configure an HL7 Laboratory with the Receiver and Sender

4. Configure an HL7 Laboratory Group (optional)

5. Configure investigations to be ordered via the Laboratory/Laboratory Group

1. Configuring an HL7 MLLP Sender

The HL7 MLLP Sender is used to send orders, and patient admission and discharge messages to the laboratory. It is configured via the Aministration - HL7 - Connectors page.

Select New - HL7 MLLP Sender and enter the laboratory connection information as per your laboratory provider's instructions.

2. Configuring an HL7 MLLP Receiver

The HL7 MLLP Receiver is used to receive order cancellation messages from the laboratory. It is configured via the Aministration - HL7 - Connectors page.

Select New - HL7 MLLP Receiver and enter the laboratory information as per your laboratory provider's instructions.

Note that Port is a TCP/IP port that OpenVPMS listens on. It must be accessible to the laboratory through any firewall. Appropriate security precautions should be taken to avoid other parties from accessing the port.

3. Configuring an HL7 Laboratory

The HL7 Laboratory is used to specify a pharmacy to send pharmacy orders to, and receive dispense messages from. It is configured via the Administration - HL7 - Services page.

Select New - HL7 Laboratory and enter the:

• HL7 MLLP Sender configured in step 1 for the Order Connector
• HL7 MLLP Receiver configured in step 2 for the Cancel Connector

4. Configuring an HL7 Laboratory Group

An HL7 Laboratory Group is used to group laboratories by Practice Location.

It is only required for multi-location practices that use different laboratories for each practice location.

It is configured via the Administration - HL7 - Services page.

Select New - HL7 Laboratory Group and enter the HL7 Laboratory or Laboratories configured in step 3.

5. Configuring Investigations

To configure investigations to be ordered by a Laboratory/Laboratory Group, edit the Investigation Types and set the appropriate Universal Service Identifier and Laboratory.

Testing the Connection

The simplest way to test the connection between OpenVPMS and the laboratory provider is to admit a patient. This will send an HL7 ADT A01 message via the Order Connector to the laboratory.

Its progress can be viewed on the OpenVPMS side by going to Administration - HL7 - Connectors, selecting the appropriate HL7 MLLP Sender, and clicking Messages.

To test the connection from the laboratory to OpenVPMS, charge an investigation, and then cancel the corresponding order at the laboratory. A corresponding:

• HL7 ORM O01 should appear in the Messages window for the HL7 MLLP Receiver
• Laboratory Return should appear in Customer - Orders

HL7 Pharmacies

Overview

This page describes how to configure OpenVPMS to interface with an HL7 pharmacy such as Cubex. For an overview of HL7 in OpenVPMS, see Concepts - HL7.

Configuration

To configure OpenVPMS to interface with an HL7 pharmacy the following steps must be performed:

1. Configure an HL7 MLLP Sender, to send HL7 messages to the pharmacy

2. Configure an HL7 MLLP Receiver, to receive HL7 messages from the pharmacy

3. Configure an HL7 Pharmacy with the Receiver and Sender

4. Configure an HL7 Pharmacy Group (optional)

5. Configure products to be dispensed via the Pharmacy/Pharmacy Group

1. Configuring an HL7 MLLP Sender

The HL7 MLLP Sender is used to send pharmacy orders, and patient admission and discharge messages to the pharmacy. It is configured via the Aministration - HL7 - Connectors page.

Select New - HL7 MLLP Sender and enter the pharmacy connection information as per your pharmacy provider's instructions.

2. Configuring an HL7 MLLP Receiver

The HL7 MLLP Receiver is used to receive pharmacy dispense messages from the pharmacy. It is configured via the Aministration - HL7 - Connectors page.

Select New - HL7 MLLP Receiver and enter the pharmacy information as per your pharmacy provider's instructions.

Note that Port is a TCP/IP port that OpenVPMS listens on. It must be accessible to the pharmacy through any firewall. Appropriate security precautions should be taken to avoid other parties from accessing the port.

3. Configuring an HL7 Pharmacy

The HL7 Pharmacy is used to specify a pharmacy to send pharmacy orders to, and receive dispense messages from. It is configured via the Administration - HL7 - Services page.

Select New - HL7 Pharmacy and enter the:

• HL7 MLLP Sender configured in step 1 for the Order Connector
• HL7 MLLP Receiver configured in step 2 for the Dispense Connector

4. Configuring an HL7 Pharmacy Group

An HL7 Pharmacy Group is used to group pharmacies by Practice Location.

It is only required for multi-location practices that use different pharmacies for each practice location.

It is configured via the Administration - HL7 - Services page.

Select New - HL7 Pharmacy Group and enter the HL7 Pharmacy or Pharmacies configured in step 3.

5. Configuring Products

To configure products to be dispensed by a Pharmacy/Pharmacy Group, set the Pharmacy on the appropriate Medication or Merchandise product, or the Product Type.

For large numbers of products, specifying the Pharmacy on the Product Type is the preferred approach, although all products with the Product Type must be dispensed this way.

Testing the Connection

The simplest way to test the connection between OpenVPMS and the pharmacy provider is to admit a patient. This will send an HL7 ADT A01 message via the Order Connector to the pharmacy.

Its progress can be viewed on the OpenVPMS side by going to Aministration - HL7 - Connectors, selecting the appropriate HL7 MLLP Sender, and clicking Messages.

To test the connection from the pharmacy to OpenVPMS, dispense a product. A corresponding:

• HL7 RDS O13 should appear in the Messages window for the HL7 MLLP Receiver
• Customer Order should appear in Customer - Orders

Orders and Deliveries

This page covers how to run the Supplier's side of OpenVPMS - ie how to generate orders and receive deliveries.

Note that the ESCI system is not covered here.

The first thing to do is to ensure that you have things set up so that ordering system will work. ie

• the suppliers have been created using Suppliers|Information|New
• products from that supplier set to use it and the supplier is set as preferred, and the ordering information is set in the product's Supplier Tab
• products have their stock location data set with current, ideal and critical quantities set in the product's Stock Locations Tab

The basic flow is:

1. Use Suppliers|Orders to create an order to a given supplier for a given stock location, edit if necessary, and when satisfactory, finalise the order [and print and send off to the supplier]. You can either use the Generate Orders button to generate the order(s), or you can create the order by keying in the line items and quantities, or you can do both - ie use Generate Orders, and then edit the order to add more items.
    
2. When stuff arrives, use Suppliers|Deliveries to create the delivery record to tell the system that stuff has arrived, edit if necessary, and when satisfactory, finalise the delivery. Note that the system makes it easy for you to create the delivery record - it will bring up a list of what is on order and you just tick off the items (or if all got delivered, the complete order). If an item was short-shipped (eg you ordered 10 and got 7), then tick the item to get it listed as one of the delivered line items, and then edit the delivery line item to record the lower actual quantity. If an item was over-shipped (eg you ordered 10 and got 15) and you are going to accept the extras (and not send them back to the supplier) just record the quantity actually received.

   Note that when you press the Finalise button you are finalising THIS delivery - you are not necessarily indicating that the complete order has all been delivered - just the stuff that arrived today. The act of finalising the delivery updates the stock and and if you have Auto-Price update set, then the cost price (and hence your sell price) will be automatically updated.

   If this was a part delivery, when more stuff arrives, create the delivery, edit if required, and finalise this delivery.

   If you receive less than you ordered, and you know that there will be no more deliveries, then you need to edit the order (not the delivery) to indicate this.  There are two ways to do this: either you can change the order's status to Cancelled, or (more correctly), for those line items that short-shipped, set the Quantity Cancelled equal to (Quantity Ordered - Quantity Received). In this second case, the order's delivery status will change to Full when all the line items have (Ordered - Received - Cancelled) less than or equal to zero.

We have now done all that is really required. However, if you want OpenVPMS to track the supplier financials, then you need to generate the supplier invoices and enter the payments. Note that you do not need to do this, and many practices use their accounting system to handle the supplier finances.

Invoices and payments are handled as follows:

1. Select a finalised delivery on the Suppliers|Deliveries  screen and press the Invoice button.  The system will create the invoice to the supplier for all delivered items from that supplier. Hence if the order was delivered in three lots, then if you wait until you have three finalised deliveries, pressing Invoice will create just one invoice.
2. Now use Suppliers|Charges to process the invoice - edit it if necessary, and then finalise it.  Note that the Supplier will not want this invoice - he should have already sent you one.  Hopefully the two will agree - in fact you should delay finalising the invoice until the two do agree. [You may have set the supplier's list price wrongly, so your order shows the widgets at $10 each, but the supplier is actually charging $11.50 each.]
3. Having finalised the invoice, it will now appear in Suppliers|Accounts. After you pay the supplier, you can now use Supplier|Payments to tell the system that you have paid.

Given the above flow, when the system is running happily, you use the Generate Orders button on the Suppliers|Orders screen to generate the order (s).  See the above link for the algorithm used.

In a startup situation, you will have orders outstanding that the system does not know about. You could use Suppliers|Orders|New to enter the order.  However, this is not mandatory - you can simply create the delivery records as the stuff is delivered. Note that because you have not entered the order, when you press New on the Suppliers|Deliveries screen,  the system will not find any orders to be delivered. Just OK this and it will generate an empty delivery record for you and you can manually add it all the line items that have been delivered.  Finalising this delivery will cause the stock to be updated.

Over the Counter Refund

If you do an OTC sale to an anonymous customer, and then they return the goods and you want to do a refund, the procedure is as follows:

1. Call up the Customers|Account screen
2. Press the Select button and search for the OTC account and select it
3. Look through the transactions to find both the Invoice for the OTC sale you want to refund and its payment
4. Select each in turn and press the Reverse button to reverse the two transactions. This will create a credit to reverse the invoice and a refund to reverse the payment

Now do the physical reversal - ie put the item(s) back on the shelf, and give the customer back their money.

Note that the refund created by reversing the payment will have the same payment type as the original payment, and you will need to do the refund the same way.

Thus, if they paid by credit card, you will need to do a credit on their credit card. You should NOT just give them money from the till.

Patients and Customers - Adding

The fastest way to add a new customer and their patient(s) is to do as follows:

1. On Customers|Information screen, click New then fill in the name etc, and then press the Add button on the Patient tab, and then the binoculars after the Patient name slot - ie as follows:

Having pressed the Patient binoculars, you will get:

Press the New button, and fill in the patient details so it looks like the following (note the use of the relative date facility to quickly set the Date of Birth and hence Age):

And then press the OK button, which will bring you back to the new customer screen as follows:

If you want you can set the ownership date to the real ownership start date (ie ask Mr Smith when he acquired Rover) but it’s not necessary.

If there are more patients, press Apply to save what you have entered, and then click the Patient Add button to add the next patient.

Having added the patients, you can now click the Contacts tab so that you can add Mr Smith’s contact details.

Finally, press the OK button and you have a new customer with their patient(s).

Patients and Customers - Finding

If you have already found your customer, then you can either select the patient from the Customers|Information screen, or you can click Patients in the top menu and use the Select button (useful if the customer is a boarding kennel and has 300 patients recorded).

However, if you are looking for a patient and have not already found the customer, then the best approach is not go via Patients|Information|Select, but rather Customers|Information|Select.

As shown below, if you omit any customer information, but provide some or all of the patient name, you will be shown all the matching patients, irrespective of owner.

Print General Labels

The standard drug label templates include a facility to generate a general purpose label.  A general purpose label will be printed for any medication product with the Printe Name set to "LABEL-CSB". For example:

This will generate a label like:

(this is using the Diskette sized label). As you can see the 'Animal Use Only' gets suppressed and the product name is replaced by the patient's Colour/Species/Breed (hence the CSB).

Note that because you can do a New Medication on the Patients|Medical records screen, select this product, fill in the label text and print the label, and THEN cancel, you can generate a label and not leave an entry in the medical records.

Restrict what products are available at each location

If you have multiple locations, you may wish to limit which products are visible to each location in charges, estimates, reminders and patient documents.

By default, all products are available at all locations, and there is no block against invoicing an item for which there is no record of any stock at the current location. (You will get a no stock warning, but if you go ahead and finalise the invoice, a stock record for that item will be created with a negative quantity.)

If you want to limit what products are available then you need to set the 'Use Location Products' flag in the Practice. Having does this, then:

• Medication and merchandise products will only be available if they have a Stock Location relationship. That is, there is (or has previously been) stock at the location. To make the product available at that location you will either have to:

1. transfer stock to that location, or
2. finalise a delivery of the product to that location, or
3. edit the product and on the Stock Locations tab, create a Product Stock Location record for that location.

If there has been stock at the location, and you wish to make it unavailable at that location, then you simply edit the product and, on the Stock Locations tab, simply delete the Product Stock Location record for that location. (Obviously, if there is stock at that location, then you will want to transfer it elsewhere before deleting the record.)

• Service and template products will available UNLESS they have been excluded via their Locations tab.

In addition, templates can indicate what should happen if an included product isn't available at the location. It the the Skip If Missing option is checked then the product will be ignored if it isn't available at the current practice location. This allows a common template to be used that selectively includes products based on the location. The Skip If Missing is not checked (the default) then the template expansion will fail if the product isn't available at the location.

Smart Flow Sheet integration

OpenVPMS can connect to Smart Flow Sheet to:

• create Flow Sheets for patients
  • during Check In
  • when transferring a task to a work list configured to create Flow Sheets
  • by pressing New Flow Sheet in Workflow - Scheduling or Workflow - Work Lists
• import Medical Record, Inventory, Tech Notes and Flow Sheets reports, and add them to a patient's history
  • during Check Out
  • by pressing Import Flow Sheet Records in Patients - Medical Records - Summary

To use Smart Flow Sheet:

1. Configure the Smart Flow Sheet Clinic API Key
2. Configure work lists to create Flow Sheets (optional)

See Troubleshooting to diagnose Smart Flow Sheet related errors.

Configuring the Smart Flow Clinic API Key

Smart Flow Sheet needs to be enabled for each Practice Location where it will be used. This is done by

1. Editing the Practice Location
2. Copying the API KEY displayed on the EMR Integration Settings page to the Smart Flow Sheet Clinic API Key

You will need to log out after making this change for it to take effect.

Once enabled:

• a New Flow Sheet button will be displayed in Workflow - Scheduling and Workflow - Work Lists. This can be used to create a Flow Sheet for the patient associated with an appointment or task
• an Import Flow Sheet Reports button will be displayed in Patients - Medical Records - Summary. This imports reports from Smart Flow Sheet for the selected patient Visit.
• an option will be displayed to import flow sheet reports during Check Out

Configuring Work Lists to create Flow Sheets

Work Lists have a Create Flow Sheet option. When ticked, this will create a new Flow Sheet for a patient when the patient is:

• added to the Work List during Check In
• transferred to the Work List

Flow Sheets are linked to the patient Visit, so no new Flow Sheet will be created if one already exists for the Visit.

Troubleshooting

• SFS-0103: Failed to connect to Smart Flow Sheet. Check that the Smart Flow Sheet Clinic API Key is correct.

Check that the Smart Flow Sheet Clinic API Key matches that provided by Smart Flow Sheet.

• Production/Test systems
  If you have both a production and test installation of OpenVPMS, you should either:

  • disable Smart Flow Sheet integration in the test system; or

  • discharge any patients that have had flow sheets created by the test system, before using it for production

This is because Smart Flow Sheet hospitalisations are linked to OpenVPMS by the patient's Visit identifier, and you cannot have two flow sheets for the same Visit identifier.
 

Use Gmail to send mail

If you have a Gmail account, you can use Gmail's SMTP server to send out mail from OpenVPMS.  Setting up things this way is particularly useful if you are using your Gmail address as the From address in OpenVPMS - because some mail systems (Gmail in particular) check the From address against the SMTP server used to transmit the email and will generate warnings to the recipient if the SMTP server used does not match the from address.

To use your Gmail account as an SMTP server, you need to set up a Mail Server record (via Administration|Organisation) as follows:

The Name, Description, Username, and Password should be set to suit your setup.

You will then need to set this Mail Server in the Practice and/or Practice Location records as required.

Note that one idiosyncrasy of the Gmail SMTP server is that if the From address in the email differs from that being used then the From address will be updated to reflect the name of the account used to send the email.

Hence if the From address is set to "XYZ Vets Inc<xyzvets[at]gmail[dot]com>", and the above Mail Server is used, then the From address will be changed to "XYZ Vets Inc<dg12345[at]gmail[dot]com>".  Thus, in the above case, it would be better to use the xyzvets[at]gmail[dot]com account in the Mail Server record.