Actually there are two questions (related) that I have for creating a new encounter:
(1) When the front desk user mark an appointment as “Arrived”, it should automatically create a new encounter and link this encounter to the provider. My observation is that sometimes it will and sometimes it won’t. Anyone has observed similar patterns? Any comments on this?
(2) When the “arrived” appointment activity didn’t create a new encounter. I tried to use the “New Encounter” option from the drop-down list of “Encounter History” to create a new encounter. However, in this form I don’t see an input field that would allow me to link this encounter to a provider. So if I create an encounter, the row in the form_encounter table won’t link to any provider. Do I miss anything here? I would think we should always link an encounter to a provider.
We had a problem with the auto-create feature last summer. It was fixed.
In the 4.1.2 (3) Demo, Susan Underwood’s 11 am appointment with Donna Lee was just marked as arrived. The encounter was generated, but it did not show up in the Encounter History drop-down. I had to go to Past Encounters and Documents to locate that automatically created encounter.
Initially when I tried to create a new encounter, an error message popped up saying that an encounter had already been created.
The relevant table seems to have been correctly populated with user 6, Donna Lee.
Regarding your second question, while creating encounter using “New Encounter” option,the user who logged in currently will be taken as the provider for that encounter, so there is no need to link it as we do in appointment creation.
It is checked. The appointment earler in the day for another patient worked like it was suppose to but this one did not create an encounter at all. I looked in the encounter file in databases and there was nothing there for that patient. I had them manually enter the encounter and it worked with no problems.
If successful earlier in the day, the second attempt must be missing a step. Sometimes it’s something ridiculously simple as not clicking “save” after choosing “@”.
If Auto-create was done correctly, it will show up in the Appointment module as well. See attachment.
If LogMeIn is available, there is the option of watching them as they go about the task.
It appears that everything was done correctly. The same person did both and in fact all of the appointments are handled by one person. I use logmein just for that so I can see what they are doing (works great). Just don’t know what it could be . very puzzling.