Build more efficient workflows in your veterinary practice with Plexi
We know how busy you are in practice – and that you probably don’t have time to read more than a few lines right now. But what if there was a way to work smarter, not harder, and still clear your ops, consults and paperwork? That’s where Plexi can help – and in the rest of this article, we’ll explain how. So grab yourself a cuppa and take 5 minutes to see how Plexi could save you many more times that, every day!
What is Plexi?
Plexi is a multifaceted patient workflow software solution that is designed to help busy veterinary practices streamline their systems to save both time and resources. With the right software, practice procedures can be simplified, tasks can be scheduled and resources can be allocated easily, avoiding conflicts that may otherwise cause time-wasting setbacks throughout the day. We can’t guarantee that your 09:30 with Mrs Jones’ latest “friendly” feral cat won’t overrun... but now you have the flexibility to work around these unexpected hiccups without the whole schedule for the day collapsing.
Plexi is designed to fit around your existing workday – but make everything easier, more flexible, and more accessible. So with Plexi, your patients’ journey through the practice might look something like this...
A routine consultation rapidly develops into an emergency case
We’ve all had something like this happen – the 5-minute Wellness Check that turns out to be a rescue cat suddenly losing weight and needs admitting. Fortunately, you can immediately add the patient to the day’s worklist in Plexi, so it appears on the inpatients list.
Get consent in moments
Even if a client isn’t with you, you can ping over a digital consent form for them to sign and return by email. And face to face, getting their signature on a tablet device makes it easy to log consent and automatically add it to the patient’s file.
Apply your practice protocols – from the moment of admission
Your practice will have preferred protocols for certain cases, such as what antibiotics to use and what the standard workup might be. But even if you have new or locum staff who aren’t familiar with how you do things, it's no problem – with Plexi, you can automatically add personalised templates to a patient record for dealing with certain procedures or case presentations, so everyone starts out on the same page and no-one misses anything.
Track your patients in real time through their admission, workup and treatment
From the moment you admit your patient, the digital whiteboards in prep, wards, and reception will have updated. It’s all showing as “pending”, so everyone from the ward nurse, to the vets in theatre, to the receptionists know what’s due, when and where.
Checklists are all included!
We all know checklists save lives... but now you can have them built into your patient’s status reports: your practice checklists will pop up on Plexi, to speed up workflow, reduce errors and improve compliance.
And if something takes longer than expected...
If your current procedure is taking longer than initially expected and you're worried about how it will affect the rest of your day, you can simply drag and drop the end time in the Plexi Scheduler and rapidly move everything around so there are no conflicts, and everyone (patients, vets, nurses and ancillary staff) is where they need to be, when they need to be there.
Instantly update the whole team
The filterable Plexi Practice Plan shows all the tasks scheduled in order on the digital whiteboards. Plexi also has a number of interlinked multi-patient sheets to replace the dry-erase whiteboards that have been used for years. Veterinary whiteboard software is a digital solution that allows everyone within your team to know exactly what's happening at all times with regard to patients, procedures, anaesthesia and everyday tasks.
Plexi’s ‘traffic lights’ system provides an at-a-glance view of a patient's progress, with the option to see more detail at the tap of a button. This means that handovers to the next member of the team are straightforward, swift and focused, and that the alert prep nurses are primed to pop in to see if the new grad needs some help!
An accurate drug calculator at your fingertips
Plexi offers inbuilt drug and fluid calculators, which eliminate the need for manual medication calculations. Not only will this speed up what is often a time-consuming process, but it also minimises the risk of human error and reduces the risk of medication errors.
The calculators can be used for continuous rate infusions, medication dose rates, and fluid drip rates, which will increase your accuracy, save time (how long do you spend calculating drip rates every day, when you could be doing something else?!) and ensure that your invoice information is both up to date and accurate to the mg or ml.
Streamline treatment sheets
If you have ever found yourself looking at your paper treatment sheets wishing they could work harder for your team, this part of the Plexi solution is certain to help you streamline your practice workflow. It's no secret that creating treatment sheets can be a serious drain on time. However, everything from medication to individual tasks such as feeds and litter tray changes can be added to a digital sheet in a matter of seconds, leaving your team free to focus on what they do best.
Plexi's digital treatment sheets are also easy to read and accessible from a variety of devices, ensuring that each member of your team has easy access to clear instructions. So, there won't be any need to scribble down information quickly only to struggle to decipher it later. Do your nurses ever complain about vets’ handwriting? Or vice versa? Well, never again!
In addition, you won't need to create a new treatment sheet from scratch at the start of each day because you can simply copy the previous day's schedule and rapidly make any edits as needed, which will save even more time.
Keeping the client updated
We know what it’s like when clients love their pets so dearly that they ring seven or eight times a day for updates. But of course, with Plexi, your team doesn’t need to go looking for charts or the nurse on duty to find out how a patient is doing – the receptionists have it all literally at their fingertips, so they can keep clients up to speed and up to date.
Making sure billing is accurate and up to date
Plexi is routinely used for scheduling all of a patient’s tasks and all billable items are added to Plexi’s billing list as soon as they are scheduled. This means no more looking for paper sheets or looking at whiteboards or clinical notes to try to decipher what needs to be billed for - it’s all there in one place right from the outset. Plexi also gives automated reminders that billing needs to be carried out, and the multi-patient worklist can be filtered by the billing status of the patients. This improves efficiency as well as capturing otherwise missed billing charges, potentially adding up to 20% to a practice’s bottom line.
Discharges made easy
Discharges can be scheduled and tracked in Plexi and practice-configurable discharge forms/checklists can be added automatically to a patient’s record. Owner discharge instructions can also be emailed and/or printed off as a PDF for the client to reference when the patient is back at home.
So, what next?
If you would like to find out more about how Plexi's veterinary software can help you on your journey to becoming paperless and building a more efficient workflow, get in touch with us today to arrange your free demo!
