Online Help

Overview

Alternate plan options in Cerbo allow you to document various kinds of recommendations or treatment plan items beyond medications, orders, and vaccines. For example: 

• Supplements that you prescribe/ recommend to patients
• Custom nutritional, exercise/ movement, or follow up recommendations. 
• Hormone pellets used in hormone replacement therapy.
• Injections (other than those that would be documented as prescription meds).
• IV therapy.

Alternate plan should not be used for:

• Compounded medications, which would instead be added to the medications list in order to be able to be formally prescribed (and eRxed).
• Specialty orders, which would instead be added to the Orders/ Labs list.
• Referrals that would be sent to a single specific outside provider or facility. Instead, you would add a Referral (or various specific types of referrals) to the Orders/ Labs list. And then select the specific outside provider or facility when sending a referral order for a patient.

Related

• Prescribing Supplements, IVs, Nutritional Recommendations, and other Alternate Plan Options
• IV Therapy - Add/Order/Manage IV Infusions
• Supplement Dosing Profiles

Details

You can use Alternate Plan Options to formally "prescribe" your own custom recommendations, lifestyle rxs, etc., as well as things like supplements and IV infusions, in the Plan box of an encounter note. There are two types of Alternate Plan Options:

1. One is a simple block of text - a discrete recommendation or set of recommendations - that you want to share with patients as needed. For example, nutritional recommendations, exercise or lifestyle changes, and the patient's next suggested appointment type/ timing all fall into this category. The text may be the entirety of what you are sharing with the patient. Or it may, for example, include links to external resources or refer patients to handouts that you have shared with them from your Practice Documents.
2. Others are special types of treatment plan recommendations/ orders/ documentation that have structured fields associated with them (some of which may be for internal use/ not shown to the patient), in addition to an area for free text patient-facing information. These include:
   1. Supplements, which have dosing profiles that can include the recommended brand, strength, dose/ timing, etc.
   2. Injections, which have ordering/ administration profiles that can include the injection location, ingredients, etc.
   3. IVs, which have ordering/ administration profiles that can include ingredients, frequency, total number, etc.
   4. Pellets, which have insertion profiles that include the insertion location, prep information, etc. 
   5. Tinctures, which have profiles that can include specific ingredients/ formulations.

Alternate Plan Options are organized by category, and any categories that you have in your database will be shown to you when you hover over the plus (+) icon in the Plan block of an open encounter note.

Select a category to bring up a search bar to search for and prescribe an item of that type from your database. You may edit the ordering/ administration./ dosing information and instructions to the patient before adding it to the Plan. 

Like other plan items, alternate plan items may be associated with Chart Parts to be able to quickly add a combination of multiple different alternate plan items (for example, a multi-supplement protocol). Or to add alternate plan items in combination with handouts, diagnoses, and other items.

To Add a New Alternate Plan Item to your Database

Go to Admin > Manage > Alternate Plan Options. When the Alternate Plan Item list pops up, click the green +Create New Plan Option button. A new Add New Alternate Plan Option pop up will appear.

Alternate Plan Name (free text field, required) 

The name of the item (e.g., "Vitamin D", "Elimination Diet", "Meditation", etc.). This is the name the patient will see when the item is prescribed and the name you will use to search for the item when you want to prescribe it.

Action Type (drop down menu)

This is the classification of the action item you're adding. This can be a supplement, a lifestyle rx, or another category you have created. If you have not yet created the category for your desired action type, choose ALL TYPES from the drop down menu, and type in the name of the category you are creating. This will be saved for future use, appearing in the drop down menu when you add a new plan option in the future. 

Certain types of alternate plan options have associated dosing/ ordering profiles or other special functionality associated.
These are:

• Supplement
• IV Infusion
• Injection
• Pellet Therapy
• Tincture
• Video Resources

Code/ID # (free text field, rarely used) 

The formal product code, if applicable.

Nickname (free text field) 

Other names for your alternate plan item that you might want to use when searching for the item. These nicknames will be searchable in Cerbo in addition to the formal name of the plan item. Separate multiple nicknames with commas.

Description (text area) 

Description of the alternate plan item. This is the information that is shared with the patient when you "prescribe" the Alternate Plan Item. You will be given the option to edit this information before you add it to the Plan for a particular patient. You may want to enter default/generic text here that you modify when prescribing it for a particular patient.

Dosing Profiles

Supplements, IV Infusions, Injections, Pellets Therapy, and Tinctures are special types of Alternate Plan Items that have dosing profiles associated with them, rather than just the text Description. You will be given the option to create the default dosing profile when you first add a new Supplement or IV Infusion or above the Alternate Plan Name when you click on an item in your database to edit it. Alternately, you can check a box at the bottom of the dosing window when prescribing an item to save those settings as a new default dosing profile. By default, the Instructions in the dosing profile will pull from the Description, unless you save different text in the Instructions.

Adding an Alternate Plan Category

To add a new category for an Alternate Plan Item, go through the same steps as above for adding a new Alternate Plan Item. In the Action Type drop down menu, choose ALL TYPES from the bottom of the menu. This will turn the drop down menu into a text field. Add the new category type in the text field and finish creating the Alternate Plan Item entry. Once the entry is completed the category will be listed in the Action Type drop down menu the next time you add a new plan item.