Workflow
Panacea has a full function Diary. But experience tells us that you have
probably already decided not to use it! After all, why would you need it?
A paper-based (book) diary works perfectly well, doesn't it?
Well, yes. Except for one thing: Panacea's diary is not just a diary.
When designing Panacea we carefully examined the daily administrative activities
in a typical practice. We quickly realized that most administrative
activities revolve around the diary. We then built Panacea's diary as a
"portal" to all your daily activities. To illustrate this, follow the
steps that would be involved for a new patient:
- The patient calls to make an appointment. You would add an appointment in
Panacea. If the patient doesn't already exist on Panacea you would add
them with minimal details, perhaps just a name and cellphone number.
- The afternoon before the patient's appointment Panacea will automatically send
the patient a reminder so he/she doesn't forget the appointment. When
viewing the diary at any time you can see who has received reminders.
- When the patient arrives for their appointment Panacea's diary will indicate
that they do not have an account. You can then ask the patient to fill in
a form with all their details. You can then add the patient's account
directly from the patient's appointment in Panacea. You can also update
the patient's personal details from here.
- Once the patient's appointment is over Panacea will show that the patient has
not been invoiced for the appointment. Once again, the invoice can be
captured directly from the appointment. Many of the appointment details
are automatically inserted into the invoice (e.g. account, patient, date, time,
treating practitioner, Place of Service). This saves you time.
It should be clear, therefore, that the Diary can be the central point from
which other administrative activities flow. One of the benefits of the
above approach is that data is entered into Panacea as it becomes available.
Data entry has become a workflow rather than an event.
One important point to emphasize is that the diary also represents a "checklist"
of things to do. You can see "at a glance" if you have forgotten to
invoice any of the patients that were seen during the day. Also, if you
want to query or change an invoice (for a particular appointment) you can do so
directly from the diary.
The decision on whether to use the diary is up to you. In our experience,
though, clients that adopt the diary early on are able to learn Panacea faster.
Ultimately they also become much more efficient.
It is suggested that you become familiar with the topics that fall under
Getting Started and Tables (on the left) before you move
onto the diary.
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