When email reminders are sent there are, almost inevitably, some that will not send correctly. You will receive a message in your Outlook Inbox stating that the message failed to send due to an invalid email address. The question now becomes "How do I discover which client had the bad email?" Sometimes it is pretty straightforward: if the email address is john.smith@gmil.com you can safely assume the client is John Smith, and his email is supposed to end in @gmail, rather @gmil. Other emails are a little more troublesome, and without Practice Explorer, Cornerstone cannot generate a report that contains both a clients name and email address. Additionally, the returned emails in Outlook only contains the pet name, and if that happens to be a rather common name, you could end up searching Cornerstone Patient Lists for quite a while. There is, however, a way to discover this information without frustrating yourself searching through Cornerstone; additionally, you do not need to resend the emails to retrieve this info.

1. If you have not already done so, generate email reminders for the appropriate dates. This can be done by left-clicking "Activities" in the menu bar, left-clicking "Reminder Selection", and then left-clicking "Generate Reminders".

2. In the "Generate Reminders" window, enter in your "Beginning date:" and "Ending date:". In the "Distribution type:" field use the drop-down arrow to select "Email Reminders Only". Left-click the "OK" button when you are finished.

3. The "Generating Reminders" window will appear showing how many email reminders have been generated. Left-click the "OK" button to close this window. The "Reports Preview" window will appear, allowing you to preview the reminders. You can close this by left-clicking the "Cancel" button.

4. Now we will locate the file the reminder information is saved into. First go to the computer desktop, then double left-click "My Computer", then the "C:" drive, followed by the "Cstone" folder. Once you have the "Cstone" folder open, scroll down until you find a file named "namelist.csv". Double-left click this file to open it; it is best viewed using the Excel program from Microsoft Office.

5. The "namelist.csv" file contains the information created by the email reminder generation. If you scroll to the right, you will a list of all the email addresses. You can expand this window by double-clicking the line between the columns titled "AA" and "AB".

6. You can now use the search function in Excel to locate the invalid email addresses and their associateed clients. On the Excel menu bar, left-click "Edit", then left-click "Find..." (you can also open it by holding the "Ctrl" key and the "F" key at the same time.)

7. In the "Find and Replace" window, type in all or part of the invalid email address, then left-click the "Find Next" button. If this does not take you to the email address for which you are searching, left-click the "Find Next" button until the correct email address is found. Left-click the "Close" button to close the "Find and Replace" window. You can now scroll left to find the corresponding client name. Once you have this information you can return to Cornerstone and locate the clients record, allowing you to make contact and update your records to include a valid email address.

Antivir 2010 (fake antivirus program)

AVG Antivirus (legitimate antivirus software)

The patient whiteboard is designed to allow staff members to keep track of patients currently in the hospital. It is designed primarily for treatments, but can be used to track surgeries and other reasons for visits. The medical notes (if required) transfer to the patients history, and invoice items transfer to the PVL.

Opening the Whiteboard

There are a couple of ways of accessing the whiteboard in Cornerstone. The first is to left-click “Activities”, then left-click “Electronic Whiteboard”, then left-click “Whiteboard”.

If you are in the patient clipboard you can also right-click the patient name, then left-click “Electronic Whiteboard”, then left-click “Whiteboard”.

Placing Patients on the Whiteboard

There are different ways to add patients to the whiteboard as well. The first is done from the patient clipboard. Right-click the patient’s name, then left-click “Electronic Whiteboard”, then left-click “Patient Orders”. This brings up the Patient Orders screen.

You can also add patients directly from the whiteboard. On the left-side of the whiteboard, right-click in the area underneath “Patients”, then left-click “Orders for New Patient”. This also brings up the “Patient Orders” window.

Patient Orders

 The patient order window is where you enter in the required procedures and treatments for patients. You can set the “Admit” and “Discharge” dates using the drop-down calendars. The “Supervising Dr.” and “Current Care Dr.” fields are required; any staff members’ initials may be entered in. The status window is usually set to “Inpatient”; this will need to be changed later on. The bottom half of the window is similar to the PVL: select what is to be performed, whether each performance of the treatment requires a separate line, what category the procedure is, how often it is to be performed, whether a note is required, and the start date.

Once the information is completed, left-click “OK”. The orders will now appear on the whiteboard. Leaving the mouse over the patients name will bring up a window with all the information.

Performing Treatments and Entering Notes

When a scheduled task is to be performed for a patient, you can access the patient treatment window by double-clicking the light-blue box for the appropriate time.

The Patient Treatment window shows the patient information, as well as what treatments are to be performed at this time (the top line) and all other treatments that are to be performed for that patient, but not specifically at that time (Vital Signs through Communication/Discharge).

Double-clicking the light-blue box for the appropriate time will open a new window. Here you will enter the staff ID of the member performing the treatment, whether to use the scheduled time or the time it was actually performed, whether it was completed or not performed, medical notes pertaining to the treatment, and any additional invoice items (the scheduled treatment will automatically fill in). Make sure the “Save to history” box is checked to save the notes to the patient record. Left-click “OK” when finished.

The treatment window will now show a green box marked “Completed” for the scheduled treatment. Double-clicking this green box allows you to view the information the performing staff member entered.

Removing Patients from the Whiteboard

Patients are removed from the whiteboard when they are invoiced out. To do so, right-click the patient name on the whiteboard and select “Patient Orders”. In the Patient Orders window, use the drop-down box to change their status to “Ready to go home”. Left-click the “OK” button, then right-click the patient name on the whiteboard, then left-click “Patient Visit List” to open the PVL.

 All completed treatments will automatically transfer to the PVL. From here you proceed normally with checking out a patient. Once they are checked out, they will appear as “Discharged” on the whiteboard. You can right-click in the patient area of the whiteboard, then left-click “Hide Discharged Patients” to only show patients currently in the hospital.

Tips and Tricks

It should be good practice to left-click the “Refresh” button in the bottom-left corner of the whiteboard to make sure the whiteboard information is current. The whiteboard refreshes  automatically (this can be set in the Practice Defaults), but refreshing will help prevent duplication of treatments.

The whiteboard uses different colors to indicate patient and treatment status. Patients overdue to go home will be hightlighted yellow instead of white. Recurring scheduled treatments are light-blue, single-scheduled treatments are dark blue, completed treatments are green, and overdue treatments are red.

Notes made when performing treatments will save to the patient record as long as the “Save to history” box is checked. They will appear in the patient clipboard as having been made on the whiteboard. Non-billable items do not transfer to the patient history unless the “Save to history” box is checked.

You can perform multiple treatments at the same time. To select a range of treatments to perform simultaneously, hold the “Shift” key, then left-click the first and last treatment to perform. This will select the first, last, and each treatment in between. To select individual treatments to perform, hold the “Control” key, then left-click each treatment individually. Right-click the highlighted treatments and left-click “Process Selected Treatments”. Each treatment item will open a new treatment notes window.

You can add your own categories, areas, and frequencies to the whiteboard if the built-in ones do not fit your needs. To do this, left-click “Lists”, then “Electronic Whiteboard”, then left-click either “Categories”, “Areas”, or “Frequencies”. A new window will open; left-clicking the “New” button will allow you to create your own options for use on the whiteboard.

With everything in the world becoming bigger, stronger, faster, smarter, so are viruses and malware.

Anti-virus and malware protection are needed essentials in everyday computer use, and especially for veterinary practices. Without it computers are left unptrotected. A previous article on this blog shows one of the worst viruses out right now called “Police Pro”.  Police pro has been spotted mainly on computers that either don’t have anti-virus protection or have out-of-date anti-virus information.

Most people don’t realize the importance of anti-virus until it is to late. We have seen an increasing number of infecitons. Virus can jump from one computer to the next in a network environment, meaning it only takes opne infection to start the process. Computers are an investment and need to be maintained.

It is easy to forget how vital computer data is; we use them for purchases with our credit cards , banking information, family pictures, music,  documents, and - most importantly - client and patient records. If you lose this data, especially in a paperless practice, you lose your business.

Pute! continues to fight against viruses and malware and we are winning the battle. We supply our clients with the correct anti-virus protection to meet their needs, and strongly recommend to all our readers that they examine current protection and contact pute! if they need changes or imporvements.

Veterinary clinics will be able to use there Mac’s for running their favorite programs like iPhoto, iTunes, editing software, etc. and run Cornerstone, Avimark, Outlook, Access, or Excel in another window . Although people like their Mac's, some software is only available for the PC. Parallels breaks the barrier and integrates everything.

The image shows Vista running on a Mac with Internet Explorer open.

Another advantage is that Parallels only uses the space that is needed . Unlike some other programs there is no need to partition your hard drive for Windows because it's like adding a program to your computer. This saves more room for photos, music , video or work related documents.

Parallels works with XP, Vista and Windows 7. It also has the option to go full screen so no one can tell you are running the Mac operating system in the background. It also makes it great for when you just want it to be a Windows XP day. A person gets the best of both worlds!!

Contact pute! about adding Parallels to your Mac.



  I ran across a new error for Avimark the other day: “unable to load graphics conversion filter".

A staff member was trying to print a Rabies Certificates. The Rabies Certificate prints through Microsoft Word and can sometimes cause Avimark to freeze if it can not read the image. . If you have a duplicate image or a corrupted image that was uploaded into Avimark you will receive an error in Word: “unable to load graphics conversion filter. There are two things to attempt when troubleshooting:

1. When importing an image the customers picture folder comes up. Make sure there are no duplicate image files in the customer picture folder. If there are duplicates delete them from the folder. If there are no duplicates but your still having the error then try the next step.

2. In the customers picture folder delete the image file, then import the image again.  If the image does not appear in the preview box of the Avimark import software then the image is most likely corrupted or in the wrong format. JPEG (.jpg) is the preferred format. You will need to resave the picture in the .jpg format before attempting step 2 again.

3. If it is still not resolved then call pute! computer services.



• Database growth, on average, slowed slightly. However, since January 2008 the average monthly growth rate has not varied by more than 43MB's per month. The slight drop may be attributable to a decline in business due to economic factors. Additionally, as more clinics implement newer practice management software versions, these newer versions are more efficient in the way they store data, thereby causing the database to grow more slowly.
• Image growth continues to outpace database growth. In addition to growing more quickly, the   rate of growth continues to increase on a monthly average. Currently image growth averages slightly over 2GB's of data per month. One factor is the move to paperless record keeping, thereby requiring paper records and documents be scanned into the practice management software. Another contributor is the move away from traditional x-ray film and towards digital radiography; this is further exacerbated by imaging software that uses the DICOM protocol, as the dcm format is significantly larger than traditional jpg.