|
Introduction:
Emma features a very powerful product pricing engine which is designed to allow complex pricing schemes to be created and delivered with ease to patients and admin staff alike.
It centres around Products, Policies and Contracts:
Products:
Every Item in emma that is available for purchase is termed a product. This may be an appointment, a drug or any other item that can be paid for. Each product is part of a group, and these groups can in turn have sub groups to ease classification. The groups can also be added into 'Sets' which define groups of groups or products. Again, this is to ease classification and sorting - if you have a group of products (or groups of products) which don't necessarily form one group but are commonly brought together in contracts, then you may add these to a 'Set' and save time when creating the contracts by referring to that set.
Each group of products or individual product are time-based so that you may create a group of products or individual product that become available at a certain time on a certain date, but then disappear again at another fixed time. These may be set in advance allowing you to schedule product promotions or discounts at a time convenient to you.
Contracts:
A contract is the pricing and eligibility model for a product. When a new product is created, it must be placed in a contract so that it can be sold. The first and most basic contract you will have in emma is the 'Private' Contract. Products, Product groups and Product sets may be added into a contract and given a start and an expiry date. This allows you to change the content of the contract as time passes on an up to minute by minute basis, should you so wish.
Products added into contracts are then subject to Policies.
Policies:
Policies are the rules for determining the content of contracts. They centre around pricing and eligibility as well as a number of other policies. These may vary from system to system and include such policies as 'Date and time', 'Reminder' or 'Location' policies. In essence, each policy type determines rules that in turn determine the booking and pricing behaviour of the products in that contract.
The parameters that are available to the user include:
- Age of the patient in years
- Sex of the patient
- Eligibility level of the patient. - The eligibility level is an arbitrary number assigned to a patient to denote seniority within a group. For example, in one organisation, 'Level 1' may denote a Secretary, and 'Level 5' a Director of the company whereas in another organisation, these levels may be completely different. The actual meaning of the levels is largely irrelevant - it should only be seen as a tool for denoting eligibility for a certain group of products and prices within that contract. The Eligibility Level number is entirely arbitrary and can be any integer number you choose. It is recorded in the individual patient record and may be changed at any time.
- Policy rules always apply in order. Ie it is critical that you place your exceptions first, then put your defaults later otherwise the system will not read your exceptions.
You may apply many policies to each product allowing such scenarios as 'Product A' is available for patients who are Male, aged between 20 and 25 and who are at Eligibility Level 3 or above and priced at price X. Similarly, as you are able to set the Effective and Expiry date on each policy, you can set prices which vary with time. These are shown in the following colours:
Grey: An expired policy.
Yellow: A pending policy that is not yet effective.
Green: An effective policy that never expires.
Blue: An effective policy that is set to expire at some point in the future.
Policies are not allowed to overlap - If Product A is set at £10 for everybody over the age of 20, and £40 for everybody under the age of 30, then the system would have no idea how to price the product aged between 20 and 30.
The only case where you will need to create an Eligibility policy but have no corresponding Pricing Policy is when the price for the product is variable - ie it varies each time it is entered. This may be appropriate for a credit note or an arbitrary discount, for example, which may be available to all patients (Eligibility Any), or in fact only avaliable to patients over the age of 40 (Eligibility 40+). In all other cases, Eligibility should be thought of how is able to have this instance of a product, and Pricing should determine the price for it. Eligibility policies always preceed Pricing Policies.
|
