In general practice what are the tasks that need software?

[Simon Slater]

Sorry to start a new thread on this, but have only subscribed to the
mailing list today.

As a veterinary practice manager in Australia, we have no legal
guidelines as to how we invoice clients, other than those given by the
Taxation Office regarding GST (VAT), which is similar to the UK and New
Zealand.  Printing of drug labels do have a guideline to follow, which
is fairly common ( 2 colour warning etc).

At the moment we just use a comprehensive accounting package, Sage Line
50, (don't worry, this is the last windoze software we are using) and am
about to get it running under WINE.  However we need to move towards
practice management software to fulfil other roles.  The practice is a
rural mixed practice, the emphasis skewed towards small animals since
the drought started, but should return to 50/50 in a few years.

So to outline what we have and would like:
Have:
    - sales orders -> client invoicing; goods delivered tracking (good for
dairy clients); automatic calculation of account charges

- purchase orders; inventory; stocktake; bills of materials (good for
tracking all the little things that go into services commonly invoiced,
down to cotton wool balls, chlorhexidine, needles & syringes for
vaccinations); supplier payments

- customer receipts -> bank deposit slips -> bank reconciliation

- limited ability to store patient histories and so produce reminders.

Would like:
    - appointment making
    - tracking patients from waiting room -> consult -> cage -> surgery
room -> cage -> discharge
    - reminders for vets or nurses to do follow up calls
    - mail merge reminders for vaccinations etc (currently OOo)
    - ability to track stock in different physical locations (penicillin in
surgery room, consult room, car of vet #1 etc)
    - electronic storage of images linked to clients (photos, X-ray etc)
    - electronic filing in general
    - ability to integrate branch practices
    - lab reference ranges per species and diagnosis ( IDEXX labs have
windoze management software that integrates patient records with their
main labs and in-clinic benchtop analysis units)

These are the main items for now.  Over the last few years we have been
slowly computerising all the paper based records and are ready to keep
moving forward now this has been done.  I hope this helps.