Practice and Locations

OpenVPMS structures the business as consisting of a single 'practice' with one or more 'practice locations'.  These locations may represent branches at different addresses, or another component of the business (eg the after hours clinic) that operates at the same address.

It is normal (but not mandatory) to have different tills, bank and OTC accounts, and stock locations for each practice location.

The currently selected Practice Location (shown at the top right of the screen) is used as follows:

• it determines which worklist and schedule views are available (as well as the till, bank, OTC account and stock location)
• it sets the default for the customer’s Practice Location (see below)
• it can select the document templates to be used (so that locations A and B use different invoice etc templates)
• it sets the Practice Location recorded for the various customer transactions when they are created - and this allows reporting of things like sales by location
• for the charge transactions (invoices, credits and counter sales) the recorded location determines any special pricing that has been set via the service ratio and/or pricing group facilities

There is no concept of customers (and their patients) 'belonging' to a practice location.  That is, a patient can 'visit' any practice location. However, it is possible to set a preferred Practice Location for each customer. This is used as follows:

• in various reports to select a set of customers
• to select those customers for whom statements and reminders  are processed
• potentially to change the content in documents as a function of the customer's preferred practice location (this requires tailoring of the various document templates)

By default all products are available at all locations. However, it is possible to limit what products are available at each location - see here.