Many users may not realise that OVPMS is increasingly able to integrate with a number of 3rd party systems/products. I am writing this post to highlight our experiences with various systems that integrate with OVPMS.

Just to give some background. We operate a 24 hour emergency & specialist centre in Sydney. We are a fairly small clinic with about 7FTE vets. My belief is the most common piece of equipment anyone uses in the clinic is our PMS and this is a massive area for efficiency gains in our business.

With this in mind a little over a year ago we purchased an electronic pharmacy system made by a company called Cubex (and sold in Australia by Therian). The pharmacy is a stand alone piece of equipment that is essentially a big locked cabinet (or set of draws). To gain access and dispense medications a staff member must login via fingerprint recognition or a Username/PIN.

The idea was to improve 3 aspects of our pharmacy management:

• Charging - We are a small clinic and were aware wastage was an issue. Usually people dispensing medications but not charging. Most commonly the old “give it a shot of X” but then forgetting to charge.
• S8 Management - The busier we have become and the more vets we have employed the worse our S8 compliance became.
• Inventory Management - The idea was by controlling access we could more accurately track inventory and automate re-ordering. Particularly with high value low stock level items (e.g. foley catheters and the such).

So, how does the integration work…

• We charge an item (e.g. 10 tablets of amoxyclav) at OVPMS (e.g. a vet might do this in consult). The integration pushes that information to the Cubex. A staff member needs to login, select the patient and the medication/s to be dispensed appear in a list. They select what they need and a door opens giving them access to that medication. They take the tablets out. If they need to take out a few more (e.g. 14 tablets) they can and when they tell the Cubex they took 14 tablets out it will push this information back into OVPMS so 14 tablets are charged for.
• A staff member goes to Cubex and dispense medications (e.g. 1mL maropitant, 10 tablets of tramadol) for a patient. The charges are pushed back to OVPMS so when the patient invoice is opened the charges automatically appear (i.e. they don’t need to manually charge them).
• We have set up templates in OVPMS so that when a TPLO comes in all the pre-medications, ongoing meds, etc are charged. So a patient comes in we charge the template and then a nurse can just go to the cubex and be presented with a list of all the medications they need to withdraw for that patient. I know the GP next door does this with Speys/Castrates for example. Likewise It means I can consult and dispense medications in OVPMS and just tell a nurse to get me the medications. They go to the Cubex and it gives them a list of what they need to dispense. I don’t have to spell it out or leave the room if I don’t want. In practice I will usually dispense meds, finish the consult, the nurse gets the meds and administers or explains to client while I am already in the next consult.
• We have heaps of items in there I didn’t even think of when we started. I have Vetstat cartridges, SNAP tests, blood glucose strips etc. So it is almost impossible to use these items and NOT charge for them. All I can say is it is scary how many blood glucose tests and electrolytes were run prior to this and not charged for. E.g. People would run 4 BGs and only charge for 1 or 2… etc etc.

Not integrations but other things the system does for us.

• The system tracks stock levels and automatically reorders depending on pre-set Min/Max levels and setting that you can change. So for example we do 2 orders a week for our primary wholesaler. One on Monday and one on Friday. Each Monday and Friday morning I get an email with what we need to order (we can send this information directly to the supplier if we want).
• I automatically get reports of my choosing daily/weekly/monthly. So each month I currently get an inventory report, S8 report, discrepancy report (so we can track if there is an issue with stock going missing) at the start of the month.
• S8 reports are all electronic. We don’t write in books any more. No. S8. Books.!!

I am not going to get into the nitty gritty of the figures.  I will say that the way we could justify the cost was if it improve charge capture by 10% or more. I could only see this happening if the system integrated with OVPMS. The integration was created and paid for partly by us and partly by Cubex. For us the system has exceeded our expectations dramatically. We have seen a 30-40% increase in our dispensing fees alone since the integration has gone live and the system has paid for itself, in full, within a year. For those of you who don’t think you have a wastage issue I can only say that in most cases in any multi-vet practice this is a delusion. Just for a fun exercise track how much injectable amoxyclav is charged and how much is used or you order… ;). Then consider how much of that amount missing may have been seperate injections that should have attracted their own dispensing fee.

The power of this system is in it’s integration with OVPMS. All the charge capture gains have come because people can’t just take something off the shelf any more. They have to use the Cubex to access it and once they do the Cubex automatically pushes the charges back to OVPMS. Anyone with OVPMS 1.8 can access this integration.

Please note. This is not a paid advertisement. Our only involvement with these systems is we use them. However I believe there is a lack of awareness that some of these integrations with OVPMS  exist and also what they can bring to practices.