What belongs on a homoeopathic prescription slip in India

Your name, your qualification and your registration number sit at the top, with the clinic’s name and a phone number the patient can actually reach. A chemist, an employer or a second doctor reading the slip should know at a glance who wrote it and how to check.

The registration number is the one item that is not a matter of taste. The NCH conduct regulations of 2022 (Homoeopathy Practitioners’ Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) require your state-council registration number on every prescription — Reg. 7 — and Reg. 36(b) treats leaving it off as professional misconduct. This is not legal advice; your state council’s current rules are the ones to check.

This one divides the profession. One side writes the abbreviation — Lyc., not Lycopodium clavatum — so the slip cannot be carried to a counter and repeated for years without a review, and so the doctor’s prescribing is not simply copied elsewhere.

The other side writes the full name: a patient has a right to know what they are taking, and a hospital or a second doctor may need to read the slip in a hurry. Both arguments are serious. Neither is settled by software, and the choice belongs to the prescriber — sometimes differently for the same patient on different visits.

The patient reads the slip at home, without you. BD and TDS mean nothing to many of them. A slip that works answers four questions in plain words:

• When: morning, afternoon, evening or night — named, not coded.
• How much: a count the patient can do at the kitchen table — pills or drops.
• Food: before it, after it, or a clear gap of half an hour to an hour.
• Language: the patient’s, not the doctor’s.

For patients who do not read English, a picture grid does more than any translation: four boxes for the four times of day, the right ones ticked, readable in black and white from an ordinary clinic printer.

Clean tongue. No coffee, camphor or strong-smelling balms. Do not touch the pills. These lines come from classical convention, not from a trial, and the schools disagree about them — coffee most of all. Some doctors print every one; some print none and say it aloud; many keep a few and add a diet line for the case in front of them.

Whichever you choose, it should be your wording, in the patient’s language, printed the same way every time — so the instruction does not depend on what the patient remembers from a busy consultation.

Paper is still what most patients file away. A PDF is what they forward to a relative, and WhatsApp is where they will look for it next month. A slip sent from the clinic’s own number arrives from a name the patient already trusts, and the doctor sees exactly what went out.

The fee belongs on a separate, numbered receipt. A patient claiming from an employer or insurer should not have to hand over the prescription to prove they paid, and a numbered series with no gaps is easier to answer for than a total scribbled at the foot of a slip.

• Identity: every slip prints your clinic, your name, “Homoeopathic Physician”, phone, email and Reg. No. No number, no slip — the print page asks for it and prints the moment you save. Your degrees do not yet have a line of their own on the slip; we would rather say so here than have you find out at the printer.
• Names: short by default, with a per-visit switch under the prescription — On patient’s slip: Short names / Full names. The line beneath shows exactly what the patient will read, and your own records always keep the full name.
• Dosing: one tap each for Morning, Afternoon, Evening and Night, and four food choices — Before food, 30–60 min before food, After food, 30–60 min after food — print as a picture grid. Each patient has a slip language: English, Hindi (सुबह, दोपहर, शाम, रात) or both, the default. Other Indian languages are not on the slip yet.
• Instructions: five built-in lines — clean tongue, coffee and camphor, handling and storing the pills, when to call the clinic — print by default in the patient’s slip language. “Instructions for this patient” on the prescribe step adds a case line, printed exactly as you type it. Rewording, unticking or adding standing lines — up to twelve, in English and Hindi — sits on the Prescription design page with your closing line.
• Delivery: print, or download an A5 PDF with Hindi rendered correctly. “Send on WhatsApp” opens your own WhatsApp with the slip’s text pre-filled — medicines, dosing and instructions in the patient’s language; you read it and press send.
• Receipts: RCP-0001, RCP-0002 and on — no gaps, never rewritten after issue, no remedies or complaint on them, and a discount shown as its own line.

Printing, the PDF, the dosing grid, slip language, short or full names, the per-visit instruction line and numbered receipts are on every plan, Free included, and Free prints on the Classic letterhead. Light and Premium add the six designs (Classic, Elegant, Modern, Band, Warm and Heritage, with a live preview), editing your standing lines and closing line, and WhatsApp sending. The pricing page lists every line.

A good slip is one the patient can follow without phoning you, and one that answers for itself if anyone asks who wrote it. hpills prints that slip from the first visit. Start free at ₹0 and judge it on your own patients, or request the live demo — and see the features in detail.