A Walk Through Using Inca Clinic

This tutorial will walk you quickly through the basic process of creating a patient, running a consultation, administering vaccines and finally creating an invoice. It's a good idea to create a test patient and run a mock consultation in Inca Clinic while reading this document.

This walkthrough applies to any type of clinic, for example those doing childhood or adult immunisation or those doing travel vaccines. Inca Clinic is a general purchase immunisation management system that can easily be configured to suit many needs. From time to time, this tutorial makes a point specific to one or another type of clinic.

There are a number of other walkthroughs that you will find useful:

* A fuller explanation of using Inca Clinc: running a consolation in a clinic. This covers the same material as here, but in more detail.

* If you wish you can watch a short video of how to do a consultation.

Before running a consultation, we'll take a quick look at how to create a patient or find an existing one.

To see a video demonstration of creating a patient, please follow this link: Create a Patient.

Don't worry if you don't view the video, the process is very simple: click the Start Here tab and select the Create link in the Manage Patients box.

On the Create Patient page, enter some details about the patient. Fields with a red bar must have a value entered; and we also strongly recommend entering an email address. Some fields in the Additional Information panel will not be relevant to all patients. The patient page looks as follows:

The easiest way to find a patient is to use the global search feature (on the top left hand corner, above all of the tabs). You can also use the Find A Patient tab if you want to use more detailed search criteria (such as the patient's date of birth).

Once you find the patient, there are many ways in which you can work with the patient, including:

1. Add to Waiting Room: this adds the patient to the Waiting Room. This can be done by non-medical and medical staff. Not all clinics use Inca Clinic to manager their waiting room, but the many that do find it a useful way to record that a patient has entered the clinic and this then makes it easier for other staff to work with that patient.
2. Start Consultation: this starts a consultation. This can be done by medical staff.
3. View Full Record: this shows the patient's full record. Each patient's record holds a great deal of information, so the patient's full record is loaded only when the “View Full Record” button is pressed. This can be done by medical and non-medical staff, but the latter cannot access the medical data tabs on a patient's full record.
4. Start a Questionnaire

Each of the above actions is carried out by pressing the corresponding button at the top of the patient's record page.

Medical staff (Medical Director, Doctor, and Nurse) can jump straight in and start a consultation, or medical and non-medical staff can add the patient to the Waiting Room.

If you click the Add to Waiting Room or Start Consultation button you will be asked to choose a Care Pathway. Choose a Care Pathway that best suits the nature of the patient's visit. By default, Inca Clinic includes Care Pathways called 'Full Travel Vaccine Consultation', 'Manage Existing an Vaccine Schedule', 'Create Prescription' and so on. Medical Staff can change the Care Pathway selected for any patient in the Waiting Room.

Small notes:

1. If a consultation is started for a patient without first explicitly adding him or her to the Waiting room, then the system adds the patient implicitly.
2. Medical Directors and System Administrations can rename Care Pathways, change the steps included in any Care Pathway, and create new ones. You’re likely to need only a few Care Pathways to suit your clinic, and we’ll help you to set these up. We provide a service to help you to set up others later, if you need to.

For a detailed look at how to do a consultation, watch this video: Do a Consultation.

The Waiting Room acts as a central location to track patients' progress through your clinic. This is especially useful if you work with a team of administration and medical staff.

To access the Waiting Room, click on the Waiting Room tab. If you are a medic, you can start a consultation by clicking on the Start Consultation button beside the patient's name on the Waiting Room page. If you need to change the type of Care Pathway you want to use, click the Options link beside the patient's name.

Care Pathways are a core part of Inca Clinic. They allow you to organise your consultation into a predefined series of steps, each of which is an individual screen that perform a specific function. For example, you may want to record the patient's Past Medical History and then create a Vaccine Schedule; these are separate Care Pathway steps. A travel clinic that wishes to have Inca Clinic record each patient’s travel itinerary will often use a step called Travel Itinerary.

Inca Clinic can be used by many different types of clinics. Care Pathways are a simple way to configure the system to your needs. A Care Pathway allows you to group a short list of steps together in whatever order suits your practice. Inca comes pre-configured with a number of Care Pathways, and you are free to change these as you like and to create your own. Learn More

Each consultation is done in Inca Clinic by working through a number of steps or pages. Each is documented separately.

This screenshot shows the Vaccine Administration page. This page can be part of a number of Care Pathways; for example, it's part of a four step Care Pathway called 'Manage Existing Vaccine Schedule'. This Care Pathway allows a medic to record or review the patient's medical and vaccine histories, schedule some vaccines (or check what has been scheduled previously) and finally administer them.

This short 2 minute video shows you the Vaccine Administration screen in action. It is also documented here.

Notes:

• If the vaccine has no batch code set, you must click the Set Batch Code button. The value entered will be saved for future use. If there is more then one active batch number, a list will appear and you can select the correct one to use for this patient.
• To indicate that a Vaccine has been administered, click on the syringe icon (and holding down the mouse button) drag it to the correct location on the body image, for example the Left Arm Upper. Release the mouse button.
• Repeat this for all vaccines listed and then press Confirm Administrations. A message will confirm that the vaccines have been recorded successfully.

Complete any other steps in the consultation and press Save and Finish.

You should look at the full consultation to see all of the steps that are available in Care Pathways.

Each clinic can define the steps that appear in a consultation. For example, a clinic can define one Care Pathway so that a first medic can take details about the patient and his/her medical history (and travel plans if that is appropriate), and then choose the appropriate vaccines; and define another Care Pathway to allow a second medic to administer the vaccines. See here for more information. If a Care Pathway includes a step that you do not wish to preform that you can sometimes just skip that step, but it is better to set up a Care Pathway that excludes it.

After you press the Finish Consultation button in a consultation, the Consultation Summary page is displayed. This allows you to review the information recorded during the Consultation, print prescriptions and decide the next step for the patient. More information is provided here.

Now that the vaccines have been administered, the medic can update the Waiting Room by choosing the Add to Invoice Queue option on the Consultation Summary page. This updates the patient's status in the Waiting Room to 'Ready for Invoicing'. Clicking the 'Generate Invoice' button will open a new Invoice for the patient.

Any vaccines administered, labs orders and prescriptions that have a sales price will be added to the invoice automatically.

On the Invoice Screen you can then add more products, consultations, etc.

Note that the vaccines that have been administrated are already listed on the invoice; the system manages this for you. You can now add other items such as Travel Accessories and Consultation Fees. Notice that the Discount drop-down list is disabled for Consultation Fees. Inca allows you decide which types of product and services can be discounted and which can not; and by default, Consultation Fees cannot be discounted. You can change this if you wish.

You can decide which Account is paying for the vaccines and other items. By default, this is set to the individual but you can choose another account by using the 'Associate another Account' feature. The invoice will then be billed to a company, charity or even another patient. Once the association is created it will remain as an option for that patient in the future.

As an advanced feature, Inca also supports the concept of multiple Price Books, allowing you to associate more than one price with a given product or service. Each account has a price book associated with it; for example, the price book for a large customer of yours may list special prices available only to that customer (it may also lists special products, for example a bundle of items that each employee of that customer is to be given). Inca Clinic comes with one default price book called Standard, and this will be sufficient for most clinics.

Inca Clinic allows an Invoice to be paid using multiple payment methods. For example, an invoice can be paid using both cash and a credit card. You can specify the list of payment methods. Inca Clinic also supports GST/VAT or equivalent taxes.

Saving an invoice is done in two steps. Once all the items, discounts and payment has been entered, press Save Invoice. This will save the invoice and show you the Commit Invoice page.

This gives you a final opportunity to process the patient's payment and if necessary make some final changes to the invoice. If also gives you the option to email or print the invoice for the patient.

Once an invoice is committed, no further edits can be made to it.

That's it, the consultation is now complete. The patient's visit may not be complete, as you may have chosen a follow-on consultation when on the Consultation Summary page. This feature can be used, for example, if a first medic chooses the vaccines, and then adds the patient back to the Waiting Room; and a second medic can then choose the patient and start a consultation to administer the vaccines.