Improvement of how letters work at present, as it’s a complex process and requires quite a lot of time to complete one letter
I get the impression that letter writing is seen as less essential for your average Pabau user, eg cosmetic clinic. It is vital for a normal medical practice and we (my secretarial team and I) really struggled. I think other systems may store your letter templates, but when you go to write open them directly into Microsoft Word and you have full functionality and then when you save they are saved in the patient record. Pabau’s solution allows you to have templates and then there is the editor but you are very limited.
I built lots of templates with merge fields and then use the editor to add additional text. However, you can’t then edit the original template if for example you want to re-size all the font, or change borders, even cc becomes an issue as you are re-writing a letter.
I agree some work should be done involving medical secretaries about the issues they struggle with and then sharing solutions but opening into an external editor (Word) and then saving would probably overcome it.
Have you had to create alot of custom fields or found another way to produce your letters?
Yes. I have created templates for new patients and follow ups with boxes for diagnosis, management, follow up and discussion. I created custom fields for this with merge tags. I then created various word templates that have the same merge tags in so that everything from the template is pulled through, eg Diagnosis, Management and Follow up and then Discussion. You could do just the dx, management, fu and then use the letter editor for free text later, but I leave the actual letter generation to my admin team to tidy up and send.
I couldn’t agree more. The letter function is impossible to use and creates a lot of extra time and money to spend editing in a word doc, inputting all GP and patient details, uploading into Pabau and then emailing/sharing.
This should be looked at urgently