Is there a way to make the “Allow SMS” and “Allow Email” boxes (or any other yes/no boxes, for that matter) in the Choices section of Demographics default to ‘YES’ for all new patients? I’ve tried setting the hipaa_allow[sms/email] fields to DEFAULT ‘YES’ from within the database itself. I’ve also tried messing with the Administration>Forms>Layouts section but so far I’ve been unable to accomplish this. Any help or pointers would be much appreciated.
Not if you are in the United States. If you are in the US, the patient must either request that they get SMS messages / Email or respond “YES” when asked specifically if it is OK to receive SMS/email. You can never send SMS messages without their consent.
The specific laws are here:
Telephone Consumer Protection Act 47 U.S.C. § 227
Yes, what you say is correct, but I still have my original question. My intent had been to hijack those fields and to use then for another purpose. Since then I’ve decided to simply add two additional fields to the database and leave Allow SMS and Allow Email for their original purpose. But I still need to know how to make a Yes/No field on the Demographic page default to Yes.
As a separate issue, it’s not illegal to change the meaning of Allow SMS/Email as long as it stays within the office. It clearly would be a problem, however, if doing so was to allow a staffer to send an un-authorized Protected Health Information text or email to the patient (that’s why I decided to add another two fields for my own purposes). As such, I can use them to permit the communication of non-protected health information in an automated fashion. Then, in the unlikely event that the individual indicates that they’d rather not receive the information in such a fashion I can selectively deactivate that process without adversely affecting HIPAA and the Allow SMS/Email issue.
So my question remains… How can I make the entry for any given Yes/No box in the Demographics/Choices page default to a specific answer? In my case that would be ‘Yes’ but in a general sense it could just as well be ‘No’.
hi @Mouse55 , just a stab at it but you could try adding a new list called Yes Only and defaulting it, and then updating the layout?
Perhaps a better way is use a conditional
This way when new patient is added or demographics is edited for another reason field will always default to condition
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I thought of using a conditional but I’d like the value to default to YES but to give the user the option to set it to NO. The above solution would appear to keep resetting it to YES if it was to be changed to NO. I believe I also tried setting it to YES if the value was set to NULL or an empty string (’’). That didn’t work as desired either.
Maybe @stephenwaite suggestion will be the only way to get by this somewhat.
Create a new list yes/no custom and set the default in the list to YES.
I’d hope I’d remember next time I’m in that code to add an option to set default. Up to this point I really never thought about.
Think it will lead to same result, will need some code to handle existing value in db.
Jerry P’s suggestion worked fine. I created a new custom list called yesno_default_yes and filled it with two values (NO and YES). Of these, the default is set to YES. That way all the other fields that use the “old” yesno list retain their previous behavior (remaining unassigned until a definitive YES/NO decision is made) but those customized new fields that I wish to default to YES behave as desired. Obviously, a yesno_default_no custom list would also be a possibility for those who desire it. Thank you all.
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