Aseptics

Example of how the booking in screen appears when booking in a regimen.

PTS 5 allows for prescriptions to be comprised of multiple child prescriptions. These are known as "regimens", and booking in such a prescription automatically suggests and books in the specified child prescriptions with their own calculated start and target times.

Using this facility a pharmacy or manufacturing unit can easily create regimens that consist of a schedule of drugs. Booking in the regimen will automatically suggest and book in the appropriate batches of drugs at the correct individual dates, times and frequencies to administer the course, and allows the regimen to be tracked collectively rather than booking in the individual drugs. The feature is particularly popular with Aseptic departments who wish to track courses of chemotherapy.

While the regimen can pre-define a schedule of drugs, doses etc. it can still be amended on-the-fly if an existing regimen does not exactly meet a patient’s particular needs.

User views can be utilised to give the dispensary a real-time view of the progress of the regimen. In addition the dispensary can also see what is outstanding for any patient at any time.

Prerequisites

• For this feature to work in any meaningful way, you will need a populated drugs table.

Setup

Prescription Types

This part of the setup process involves creating a uniquely configured prescription type to act as the parent container (regimen) of the child prescriptions (drug batches).

1. As a PTS administrator, create a new prescription type and name it "Regimen" or "Aseptics Regimen" or similar. The name can be generic.
2. The parent prescription type should have the following specifics:
   1. Under type details set regimen to "yes", and set show on homepage to "no".
   2. Under scanning sequence, booking in should be the first and only activity (the parent prescription does not itself get tracked; it's constituent child prescriptions do).
   3. Under booking-in options, set number of patients to 1, set number of labels and number of tickets to 0, and set start type to always start.
3. RECOMMENDED: Set up new prescription type/s for the child prescriptions/drug batches. The setup of these types have no special considerations except that their start type should be never start, so that the prescription remains pending until the correct time according to the schedule. The number of patients should also be set to 1. Other than that the scanning sequence, target time and demographics etc. are up to you.

Regimens

Adding a drug batch to a regimen.

This part of the setup is where you define the regimen and its schedule of drug batches.

1. As a PTS administrator, create a new regimen and give it a unique name.
2. Under batches, click the plus button to add a drug batch to the regimen:
   1. Under type select the prescription type you want to use for the drug batch.
   2. Begin typing the name of the drug in the drugs field; it should auto-complete for you as you type.
   3. Enter the number of doses (remember this is based on the drug pack chosen in the previous step).
   4. The "starting on requested date" field allows you to build in a delay between when the regimen is booked in and when this particular batch should start. e.g. enter 0 to have this batch start immediately, or enter 3 to have this batch start 3 days after the regimen is booked in.
   5. Enter the number of weeks the drug batch should repeat for. This, and the previous step, provide the foundation for the scheduling aspect of the regimen.
3. Repeat step 2 for as many drug batches belong on the regimen.

It's also valid to create a regimen with no pre-defined batches on it at all. This results in a regimen that it entirely defined during the booking in stage. This allows for you to create a custom schedule of drugs on-the-fly.