My son David (who is the main house house call for his Hong Kong practice) has discovered that The Customer Orders facility can be used without having an HL7 Pharmacy or Cubex machine.  That is, a mobile vet can create customer orders that will be fulfilled by in-house staff from the in-house pharmacy.

Since this is at the Discussion stage, rather than provide a dry specification here, I have chosen to quote his reply to my email asking for clarification of what tweaks he wanted. It is as follows:

I've spent a day or two using the system and thinking about what it needs - and it's so close to being perfect I think it would only take a couple of tweaks and be ready to roll out. This might also have much more widespread application than the external ordering. It's common in a lot of clinics for clients to order stuff to pickup with the vet then the staff need to prepare.
 
These are the alterations I would make:
1. Don't automatically invoice.
At the moment if there is a pending customer order for a client, the moment I make a new invoice for the client the system will automatically try to invoice that customer order.
This doesn't work if I'm in consult, make up a customer order, then invoice the bill for the consult.
Maybe instead the system could flash up a question" "Do you want to invoice the outstanding Customer Order Y/N"
This way we could process invoices without being forced to do the customer order.
It's also a problem if I've placed an order that isn't in stock - as we can't bill the client for anything else until we process that Customer order (or delete it and put it in again after we invoice for other stuff).
 
2. Allow Drug Label creation
Allow a label to be made for the dispensed drugs on the order
 
3. Allow prescription creation
Follows on from 2, ie allow the new prescription button
 
4. Let the staff know the order is there.
- maybe somehow send an alert to certain staff - like a little icon in the corner similar to messaging showing there's an order awaiting processing?
- or alternately just populate a to-do list on a worklist with "Outstanding orders"
 
I think with these additions it would be perfect, but even at the moment it's very workable and since we've started using it it's been much better than our old email system, it avoids constantly bombarding the office with orders, and it keeps a track of which orders have been placed.
 
It's really working well.

Regards, Tim G

When product templates in OpenVPMS are expanded, duplicate products are merged so that only a single line item appears with the cumulative quantity.

This is useful for nested templates that include common products, but means that a fixed price is only charged once. This doesn't support the case where pain relief may be administered several times, and a fixed price is charged each time.

To support duplicates in templates, a new Merge Duplicates flag will be added, to indicate how duplicates should be handled.
When selected, all duplicates included by the template will be merged. This is the current behaviour, and will be the default.
When deselected, any duplicates included by the template won't be merged.

Nested Templates

When a template includes nested templates, the Merge Duplicates flag applies to the immediate template. e.g given:

• template A, Merge Duplicates = false
  • tempate B, Merge Duplicates = true
    • product 1, quantity = 1
    • product 1, quantity = 1
  • template C, Merge Duplicates = true
    • product 1, quantiy = 1

The invoice or estimate will contain the lines:

• product 1, quantity = 2
• product 1, quantity = 1

Supplier Orders

If a template is expanded in a supplier order, the Merge Duplicates flag will be ignored, and duplicates will always be merged.

Overview

At present, subscriptions are managed by assigning contact purposes to a customer's contacts. e.g. a Reminder purpose can be assigned to a customer's email address so that they receive patient reminders via email.

Contact purposes are used to:

• classify contacts (e.g. a phone number is a mobile)
• indicate a subscription (e.g. use this contact for reminders)

The following purposes are provided:

• Home - used to indicate a home phone number
• Work - used to indicate a work phone number
• Mobile - used to indicate a mobile phone number
• Fax - used to indicate a fax number
• Correspondence - used to denote that a location should be used for general correspondence
• Postal - used to indicate a postal address. Unused
• Reminder - used to indicate a contact should be used for patient reminders
• Billing - used to indicate a location contact should be used for billing purposes

These can be extended by practices; e.g a Newsletter purpose could be assigned to a customer email contact to indicate that they wish to receive a newsletter via email.

This project will provide a Subscriptions Management window to make it easier to manage customer subscriptions, and provide a web API to allow customers to unsubscribe from particular notifications.

Subscriptions Management

To provide a clear overview of a customer's subscriptions, and to allow them to be changed, a new Subscriptions Management window will be provided. This will be launched via a Subscriptions button in Customers - Information

This will:

• display available contact purposes, with the customer contact used for that purpose in a drop-down list. Selecting None in the drop-down removes the contact purpose from the contact.
• support multiple contacts for some contact purposes
• support custom ordering of the contact purposes

E.g.:

Subscription API

A web API will be provided to allow individual subscriptions to be removed, given an encoded key containing the customer identifier and contact purpose.

The API will be password protected; it is not intended for direct use by clicking a link, but should instead be invoked by a customer portal.

A subscription:encode(customer, purpose) method will be provided so that reports can generate the key for an unsubscribe link.

Configuration

The contact purposes available for subscription will be configurable, as will the contact types that they apply to.

This will be done via 2 new archetypes, lookup.subscriptions and lookupRelationship.subscriptionContactPurpose.

The lookup.subscriptions archetype links to available contact purposes using lookupRelationship.subscriptionContactPurpose.

The lookupRelationship.subscriptionContactPurpose archetype:

• links to a lookup.contactPurpose
• determines the order that they are displayed in

The lookup.contactPurpose archetype will be updated to enable the contacts that the purpose applies to, to be selected.

Related Projects

• Reminder Processing Rules

This project will add support for boarding appointments, and provide a boarding summary underneath the patient summary, for boarding patients.

Boarding Appointments

Boarding appointments will have the same details as Appointment but also include:

• Check boxes for boarding specific information:
  • Belongings - indicates that the pet has belongings that need to be returned
  • Medication - indicates that the pet has their own medication
  • Own Food - indicates that the pet has their own food 
• Time entry shortcuts. The Start and End times will have dropdowns with options:
  • Open
  • Early AM
  • Late AM
  • Noon
  • Early PM
  • Late PM
  • Close

This project will provide support to add reminders when a patient is created.

The Patient editor will display an Add Reminder button that is enabled once the patient is saved. When clicked, this will create a reminder and display it in a Reminder editor. Multiple reminders can be created this way.

If a patient is created, and no reminders have been added by the time OK is pressed in the Patient editor, a prompt will be displayed:

Add Patient Reminders?

Do you want to add any reminders for this patient?

Selecting Yes performs the same operation as the Add Reminder button.

This project will enable mailing labels to be printed for customer location contacts.

A default label template will be provided (what size?).

Overview

This project will improve order selection facilities when creating Supplier deliveries and returns.

Prior to creating a delivery or return, a browser is displayed to select the orders that the delivery/return is for. E.g.:

There are two types of rows in the table, the first shows just the order date, and the second the line item(s).  In the above picture there are two orders, each with one line item.

For deliveries, the table displays line items for finalised orders for which delivery is incomplete.

For returns, it displays line items for orders where there has been a delivery.

Users can pick selectively pick the line items to include in the delivery or return as described in the help.

If the number of line items is large, it can be difficult to locate individual line items. This is especially true for returns, where an item being returned may be located some time in the past.

This project will:

• move order selection into the Delivery/Return editor
• provide an improved search facility to locate individual order lines

Editor Changes

At present, the Order selection browser is displayed. This prompts for the supplier, stock location and orders to include in the delivery/return.

This will change so that:

• the supplier and stock location is prompted for
• the Deliivery/Return editor is displayed

A new Add Order button will be added to the Delivery/Return editor:

This will display the existing order browser, allowing orders to be selected for inclusion. It will only display those orders not already included.

Order Browser Changes

The order browser will be changed to include:

• a Search field that searches for products with a matching name or reorder code
• a date range filter. This is currently only visible when performing returns

For deliveries, it will default to all dates.

For returns, it will default to all orders in the last month. This is the current behaviour.

This project will extend the customer summary to include up to 3 of the customer's pets, in alphabetical order e.g.:

Clicking on one of the pets will switch to Patients - Medical Records for that pet.

If the customer has more than 3 patients, a View All button will be displayed. When clicked, this will display a popup that provides a summary listing of all the customer's pets. Clicking on one of these will switch to Patients - Medical Records for that pet.

OpenVPMS currently allows estimates to be copied via the the Copy button in Customers - Estimates and Visit - Estimates.

When clicked, a new estimate is created for the same customer and patient(s) with:

• the current date/time
• Completed status
• the items of the original estimate

The estimate is immediately saved.

This project will change this behaviour. When pressing Copy, a prompt will be displayed with the following options:

• Copy
• Copy to

Customer: [field to select the customer]

Patient:    [field to select the patient]

   OK      Cancel

Pressing OK copies the estimate according to the selected option:

• Copy - this is the default, and copies the estimate as per the current behaviour
• Copy to - this copies the estimate to the selected customer and patient. The fields default to the customer and patient of the original estimate*.

Once copied, the new estimate is displayed in an editor. Pressing OK/Apply saves the new estimate. Pressing Cancel discards it (providing Apply hasn't already been pressed).

If the copy is made in Customers - Estimates and is for a different customer than the current, a prompt will be displayed:

Do you want to change to <New Customer>
 

Yes  No

If Yes is clicked, the new customer will selected, and the new estimate selected in Customer - Estimates.

* if the original estimate had multiple patients, the first patient will be selected.

This project will extend the existing Product - Copy functionality, by allowing the target product archetype to be selected. The fields common to the source and target archetypes will be copied, and everything else excluded.

This will apply to the following product types:

• Medication
• Merchandise
• Service