Hi All,

We have been doing a lot of the early testing and integration for Smart Flow sheet billing (which is now working well (YAY!) and will be part of the 2.0 release) and through this process it has highlighted an opportunity for improvement in the OpenVPMS software.

The problem for us is where we may want to charge a different amount for the same product in different situations.  Eg:  Buprenorphine inj (stand along inj) vs Buprenorphine oral vs Buprenorphine as part of a premed.

We manage this situation currently with a primary product (buprenorphine) and then a series of templates each which contains the product and also a 'service fee' for that item OR the item is listed in the template as a 'zero charge'.  This helps us to ensure that we can manage the stock with the primary product, but also means that we have multiple service items within OpenVPMS.   Some hospitals also have this same issue if they charge a different price template for different situations (injection in consult charged differently to an injection given in hospital)

To solve this I've thought of a few options... but not sure of their far reaching implications?

(a)

It would be good if we could have a "primary product", which is stock controlled, and then "secondary products" which have all the options related to the normal medication items (eg doses / linked / investigations / classifications / etc) BUT their supplier and stock location are linked back to the primary product.

Would this be useful to others, including those not on SFS??

(b)

SFS does not allow templates to be included currently as billable items from within SFS.  As such any items that are 'use only in templates' are not billable through SFS.

From my understanding (and conversation with Tim A and Tony) allowing templates to be billable will require some significant thought and work, as the SFS billing uses the customer order functionality which will then require the customer orders to be upgraded to allow for templates, some of which are nested templates.   We would need some understanding and agreement as to how best to handle the multiple templates, including how we could reverse this if the item was removed from SFS.  This may have impacts / benefits (??) to other parts of OpenVPMS and those that use the customer orders section from other functionality... eg Cubex.

Having said all of this, billing a template from within SFS could be really beneficial, but needs some thought.

(c) Final option would be to have some more granular control of billing within each individual product.  (This could get messy).  This could include:

• Ability to chose whether they are billable through SFS (including those that are 'use only in templates')
• Different prices for items invoiced through SFS, both within the prices tab and and the linked prices option.

Sorry for such a long winded post, but thought it worth trying to get my thoughts down on the page, and to see what option(s) may have benefits for others beyond just SFS and also what issues and concerns does everyone have with any of these development ideas?

Thanks again

David