Toniq Prescription Manager - Uncollected Prescriptions

Background

The first piece of functionality developed within the Toniq Prescription Manager is the ability to manage your pharmacy's uncollected prescriptions. It can be found under 1. Prescriptions then F5. Rx Manager.

As a summary, the Prescription Manager Uncollected Prescriptions functionality allows you to:

• View all the items Toniq thinks are uncollected at your pharmacy
• Mark items as collected
• Optimise the collection of items by contacting patients with ease (use-based texting charges may apply), based on a pre-defined pattern

Prerequisites

To enable this functionality in 5.43, your pharmacy needs to be tracking the collection status of items. 

Patient view

Upon entering the prescription manager, you are presented with a list of patients who have items with an uncollected status. The list shows the: 

• Patient details
• Number of items uncollected for that patient
• Number of "days uncollected" - i.e. the largest number of days that an item for that patient has been left uncollected
• The date they were last contacted about their uncollected item(s)

For each patient, there are two detail panels at the bottom of the screen. The left panel provides more identifying information about the patient in context and the right the texting information (see the Texting section for more details).

Prescription view

Toggling F4. Rx View will show the list of items that a patient has uncollected. From this view using the F6. Select (for an individual item) or F7. Select All (for all items in the list) will mark the selected items as collected after confirming the selection.

Optimise medication collection

One main functionality of the uncollected view is to enable communication with patients with uncollected items in a predictable manner to help increase the collection rate of prescriptions.

If you have enabled automatic flagging of texting, upon opening the Prescription Manager, each patient is checked against pre-set rules (set by you) to determine if they are eligible for a text about their uncollected item. The status of this check is displayed on the right side of the list:

1. Grey envelope - this means that patient is eligible for texting, if F6 Contact option is taken, this patient will be texted
   
2. Grey envelope with yellow exclamation mark - this means that patient is eligible for texting but for some reason they can not be texted. The reason will display in the message preview box.  Possible reasons include:
   • No mobile number
   • Deceased patient
   • Hidden patient
   • 'No text' set on patient
      
3. Blank - patient not eligible for texting or Prescription Manager texting option is not turned on. The next time the patient is due for texting will be displayed in the Message Preview box (bottom right). 

Pressing F6. Contact will attempt to contact all those in the list determined eligible for a text. The number of texts and patients to be texted will be displayed when F6 Contact is selected to confirm before texting occurs. The status of this action is reflected in the icons:

1. Red envelope - text message was not able to be sent to this patient. The reason should display in the message box at the bottom right of the screen. (This will only show in the current session of Prescription Manager.)                                                                                                             
2. Green envelope - text message has been successfully sent to this patient. The Contacted date will have updated to today's date.                                                                                                           

The success/failure status will only show while you remain in the Prescription Manager. The eligibility will be refreshed if you leave and re-enter the functionality.

Note: The sending of the text messages is not automated at this point in time, but likely will be an option in future versions

Settings

The Prescription Manager has several options pertaining to texting which enables each pharmacy to create a texting pattern that meets their requirements. Based on the following settings, the Prescription Manager automatically identifies patients that are eligible for texting (and will be texted if F6 Contact option is taken) based on the criteria setup in the Prescription Manager options. This can be found by taking 1. Prescription, F5. Rx Manager, F11 Options.

Identify Patients due for texting

If this option is not ticked then no patients will be identified for texting, and any criteria setup will be ignored. The cellphone symbol column on the Uncollected Prescription Patient view will be blank.

Rx item minimum days uncollected

This is the initial period that a prescription item must be in 'uncollected' status before it is first eligible for being texted about, i.e. how long the item will be on the shelf before you remind the patient to collect the item

Number of follow up reminders

This is the number of follow up reminders after the first initial text. The number of days after each text is determined by the 'Interval between reminders' field.

Interval between reminders

This is the number of days before a prescription item becomes eligible for texting again after the last text. The number of reminders is setup by the previous field.

Message template

This is the message template that will be used when texting patient from within the Prescription Manager. The template must have been created previously (this is done from main dispensary menu 6. Contacts, 6. Maintain message templates, F3. Add)

Use Alternative Identifying criteria for CD Rxs

Controlled Medications have extra requirements on their handling and around supply. A stratified texting logic for these items (e.g. to text patients with controlled medications sooner) can be enabled by checking this option.

If this option is ticked the Prescription items that are for Medicines that have a class of Control drug A or B will use this criteria instead of the standard texting settings. The fields below have the same meaning as the standard texting ones except they only apply for the Control drug prescription items.

See below: Examples - to understand how the texting works when there are more than one prescription item for a specific patient.

Examples

One Prescription

When a patient has one uncollected prescription item, the process is quite simple:

• The Rx item becomes 'uncollected' when it's processed through Toniq Dispensary
• If the item is still 'uncollected' when the number of days for the Rx item minimum days uncollected has been reached then the patient will become eligible for texting and a grey envelope will be shown next to the patient
• After texting the patient, if the prescription item is still uncollected then the number of followup remindersis taken into consideration
  • If it is 0 then this prescription item will not trigger the patient to get any more texts about this item. 
  • If it is 1 then once the number of days in Interval between reminders has been reached then the patient will be eligible for texting again. So the grey envelope will be put in the cellphone symbol column again and next time F6 Contact it taken this will be texted about. 

For example, using the settings in the screenshot above:

• If an Non-CD prescription item became 'uncollected' on the 1 August, the patient would be come eligible for a text on the 8 Aug 
• If they were texted that day they would become eligible on the 15th Aug for the last time, 7 days for the first text and 7 more days for the next text.

If the prescription item had been a controlled medication, they would have been eligible for texting on: 4th Aug and 7th Aug and 10 Aug instead. 3 days for the first text, and 3 more days for the 2 followup reminders.

Two Prescriptions

Things get a little more complicated when there is more than one prescription processed on different days, as each prescription could make the patient eligible on different days, but, the patient won't be texted more often than the criteria. 

For example, using the settings in the screenshot above:

• If a Non-CD prescription item became uncollected on the 1st August it would expect to eligible for texting on the 8th and 15th of August
• If the patient also had a controlled medication dispensed on the 2nd August, they would be eligible for texting on the 5th, 8th and the 11th of August
• If the patient came and collected the CD item only at this time, the CD item would stop generating any more triggers as it is now 'collected' however the non-CD prescription item would now need to send a reminder 7 days after the most recent contact which was on the 5th Aug so the next text for that patient would be on the 12 Aug (7 days after)

Other functionality

Sorting the list

Sorting this patient list can be done using F8 Sort either sorting on Days uncollected, Number of items or Patient name. Re selection a the same sort order will reverse the order. e.g. if F8 Sort, Patient name is selected the patients are listed from A-Z, if it is selected again they are sorted by Z-A.

Find a patient

A specific patient can also be located in the list by using the F9 Find option - this will select the patient and automatically display the Rx view for the selected patient. Exiting the Uncollected Prescription item view via either F4 Patient view or Esc will return you to the Uncollected Prescription Patient screen with the 'found' patient still selected within the list.

Excluding Phone and Referred Prescriptions

By default Phone and Referred Prescription items are included in the Prescription Manager if they are 'uncollected' status.

It is possible to exclude these prescription items from the list by ticking the exclude option for Phone or Referred Prescriptions.