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OutSmart Guide

IV Therapy

The IV Therapy section captures the composition of an IV bag — base solution, ingredients with concentrations and amounts, lot numbers, expiry tracking — and prints a bag label you stick on the bag. It uses the same recipe-and-blend model as Recipes and Blends, so a typical IV protocol you give regularly is set up once as a recipe and applied to each patient who needs it.

Adding an IV Therapy Section

  1. In the chart editor, click the + button on the page where the IV belongs (commonly +P on the Plan page or +O on the Objective page if you’re charting an administered IV).
  2. Choose IV Therapy from the section-type menu.
  3. Pick the IV recipe from the dropdown, or build a one-off composition from scratch.

If you’ve used the recipe before for any patient at the clinic, it’s available here — recipes are shared at the office level so practitioners don’t rebuild the same IV from scratch each time.

Building the IV

The IV section has the same structural model as a blend recipe:

  • Base solution — the carrier fluid (saline, dextrose, sterile water, and so on) and the bag volume
  • Ingredients — each substance with its concentration, the amount in the bag, and the ingredient’s lot number
  • Notes — any administration notes for the visit

For full detail on the recipe model — saving an IV as a master recipe, varying ingredients per patient, the Tincture Calculator for dosage adjustments — see Recipes and Blends. The IV section uses the same editor.

Finalizing the IV

Like blends, an IV must be finalized before it counts as administered:

  • While building — the IV section is just a recipe applied to this chart. No inventory has moved.
  • On Finalize — OutSmart deducts each ingredient’s stock from the dispensary, adds the finalized IV to inventory as a billable item, stamps it with a unique lot number and timestamp, and makes it available for billing in the Express Checkout card.

Don’t finalize until the IV has actually been compounded and administered, or the dispensary’s inventory counts will be out of step with what’s on the shelf.

Printing IV Bag Labels

Once the IV is built, you can print a label to stick on the bag. Click Print Bag Label under the IV Recipe Ingredients list. The print preview opens with:

  • The patient’s name and date
  • The recipe name
  • The full ingredient list with amounts
  • An optional expiry date field
  • A size picker

Bag label sizes

SizeWhen to use it
2-3/4” x 2-1/8” (Dymo 30258)Smaller bags, fewer than 10 ingredients
4” x 6”Larger bags or more than 10 ingredients
Half-pageWhen you’re printing on a standard letter printer instead of a thermal label printer

Your last-used size and expiry-date setting save automatically as preferences — the next IV label you print loads up with the same format you used before, so you don’t reset them each time.