anthony2014 wrote on Monday, April 14, 2014:
Hello there;
How does one delete a copay entry from a fee sheet?
I am using OpenEMR version 4.1.2.
When I enter a CPT entry as a new row onto the fee sheet, I’m able to remove it by checking the Delete column checkbox, and then saving and refreshing.
However I am not able to remove a copay row entry, so that I sometimes end up having two copay rows on the same fee sheet.
Thank you in advance.
fsgl wrote on Monday, April 14, 2014:
Replace copay amount with zero & save.
anthony2014 wrote on Tuesday, April 15, 2014:
That does not work for me. I’ve attached an example of three copays on the same sheet. I tried to delete one by setting the amount to zero, to no avail.
I’m using version 4.1.2 if that will be of any help.
mdsupport wrote on Tuesday, April 15, 2014:
Seems like a bug after the payment changes. Anyway, do the following:
batch payments -> search payment -> enter details -> delete from the list -> confirm.
anthony2014 wrote on Tuesday, April 15, 2014:
It deleted one. So there are now two copays.
However, the problem I have with this approach is that it means that the recording of payments received is disrupted.
Perhaps it’s a bug as you have suggested. Are other people able to repeat my observations?
To attempt to recreate the problem, on the fee sheet, add Copay more than once.
fsgl wrote on Tuesday, April 15, 2014:
Three copays were added to Phil Belford’s 4/14/14 encounter. All three were successfully adjusted out with zeros. 2107 Demo.
There should be no inaccurate documentation of copayments if they need to be adjusted out. There is no reason to adjust out the payments if they were correct in the first place. If it’s necessary to provide details of any transaction, use Billing Notes in the Billing view of Past Encounters and Documents.
Copays can also be adjusted out in the EOB Posting Invoice, which can be accessed by double clicking under the Code column for that particular encounter.
anthony2014 wrote on Tuesday, April 15, 2014:
Still no luck. If it’s of any help, this is my environment configuration:
i)Windows Vista Home Edition
ii)OpenEMR 4.1.2 patch 5
iii)XAMPP install
I deliberately added several copays to simulate a scenario of a receptionist mistakingly entering multiple copays and wishing to delete the undesired copay entry, i.e. a real-life scenario that includes a learning curve.
Copays may be adjusted out of the EOB after the above scenario, but when one is presenting a product to a medical practice, if one runs into the scenario that I’ve run into, one runs the danger of the staff complaining that the software will be cumbersome to use and will take up a lot of their time. Medical practices are typically organizations with a lot of money and may not hesistate to replace a product that their employees believe is impeding efficiency. Deleting copay should be as straight forward as deleting CPT codes, ideally also using the delete checkbox (right now it’s redundant for copay, not to mention that one needs to know that the procedure to delete copay is different from deleting a regular code entry.)
anthony2014 wrote on Tuesday, April 15, 2014:
Still no luck. If it’s of any help, this is my environment configuration:
i)Windows Vista Home Edition
ii)OpenEMR 4.1.2 patch 5
iii)XAMPP install
I deliberately added several copays to simulate a scenario of a receptionist mistakingly entering multiple copays and wishing to delete the undesired copay entry, i.e. a real-life scenario that includes a learning curve.
Copays may be adjusted out of the EOB after the above scenario, but when one is presenting a product to a medical practice, if one runs into the scenario that I’ve run into, one runs the danger of the staff complaining that the software will be cumbersome to use and will take up a lot of their time. Medical practices are typically organizations with a lot of money and may not hesistate to replace a product that their employees believe is impeding efficiency. Deleting copay should be as straight forward as deleting CPT codes, ideally also using the delete checkbox (right now it’s redundant for copay, not to mention that one needs to know that the procedure to delete copay is different from deleting a regular code entry.)
fsgl wrote on Tuesday, April 15, 2014:
If the 2107 Demo had not been used with Firefox, do so.
The pique expressed is unreasonable because it is never polite to be critical after being given a gift and an open source application. Additionally there have been 3 attempts within 24 hours of your original post to help you. Being annoyed is counter-productive.
If OpenEMR is unsuitable for your practice, it is your prerogative not to use it.
anthony2014 wrote on Tuesday, April 15, 2014:
My sincerest apologies. I work in a programming environment, and usually such a statement is not taken to mean annoyance, but a challenge to programmers to be consistent(programmers love challenges.) I guess the OpenEMR environment is different, so I’ll adapt.
I am not using the 2107 Demo. I performed an actual install of the XAMPP/Windows version and I am working with it the way that it would be used in a medical practice environment. I am interested in knowing what environment you are using that does not have this issue.
By the way, I do not seem to have privileges to delete the double entry of my previous answer(most likely from a double click on my browser.) Is there an administrator who can delete one of them?
jcahn2 wrote on Tuesday, April 15, 2014:
“We must disenthral ourselves and then we shall save our software.”
How about recognizing that workarounds do not favorably impress potential users. We must strive to make OpenEMR a software of choice for its quality, not its price tag.
Having failed once again to sell OpenEMR to my office, you may count me in with the counterproductively annoyed.
With admiration for your indefatigable contributions, Jack
yehster wrote on Tuesday, April 15, 2014:
Are you sticking with your existing system? Or are you going to something else.
How about recognizing that workarounds do not favorably impress potential users. We must strive to make OpenEMR a software of choice for its quality, not its price tag.
Trust that we recognize this fact, but it’s much easier said than done.
Any particular issues that you’d like to add to the ever growing wish list? or is it all stuff we’ve heard before?
tmccormi wrote on Tuesday, April 15, 2014:
This is a clear example of something that is not being handled correctly in the “accounting” part of the project… hence my desire to expend some effort and money on address the whole process, versus piece meal patching and work arounds.
See my post on the Users Forum
-Tony
fsgl wrote on Tuesday, April 15, 2014:
Anthony,
Because there is no perfection this side of heaven, we have work-arounds.
Forum members often use the Demo’s to confirm the presence of a bug or to demonstrate problems/possible solutions.
The example in the 2107 Demo was set up to give you a sense how the copays can be deleted with zeros. That Demo has reset. The example has vanished.
The 2103 Demo is a weekly build; thus the example for Jane Seymour, encounter of 4/15/14, will be available for the next week. Take a look at the Fee Sheet and the work-around should be more clear.
Since we don’t have a direct connection to your copy of OpenEMR, Demo’s are the next best thing.
Jack,
If you are Catholic (even if you are not), consider the OpenEMR exile as less time in purgatory.
blankev wrote on Tuesday, April 15, 2014:
Usually fsgl is correct with a lot of explanations and has some wisdom in any language available. But this time you have to visit the weekly Demo ASAP, since this Demo will be reset after a week, every week, don’t know if it is today of next Monday…
Good luck with exploration of the Fee-sheet (or was it Fee-shit… ;-)) It takes a wise person to answer the many questions. Most of the time a question creates more questions. But after the sunny-time there will be more rain. Rain is good for the trees and the many trees are needed for this paperless timespan.
jcahn2 wrote on Tuesday, April 15, 2014:
Same wish list Kevin. “We” chose to stay with SpringCharts and Medisoft.
anthony2014 wrote on Tuesday, April 15, 2014:
fsgl;
I very much appreciate the effort that you have taken to respond and your effort in pointing out a potential work around(which unfortunately did not work on my configuration.)
With your permission, I would like to suggest that specifying the exact configration of a demo would be extremely helpful.
Even though the code was developed in PHP, environmental factors can affect the working of the code. A demo copy without the configuration setting may hide some of the potential causes of the problem.
I will illustrate by example.
I had the opportunity to look at other forum postings and noticed that some questions were related to a Linux setup. Those of you who have programmed both on Linux and Windows are already familiar with the fact that Linux files do not have a carriage return on a newline, whereas windows files do. You may have had the unpleasant experience of having reinstall the Linux OS because you developed a low level shell script on Windows and then copied it to Linux without have passed the file through a formatter to remove the carriage returns, resulting in your Linux-based computer failing to boot. Likewise, though less frequent, certain characters saved on a file in the Linux environment may have unintended effects in a Windows environment.
And even if the characters are saved in the correct formats compatible with both operating systems, the tools used to open the PHP files in the different environments may result in unintended behaviour. For example, you may have developed the code in Linux and saved it to utf8 file format. However, the tool used to open the file on windows may default to CP1251, resulting in lost bytes when the file is closed again and in unintended execution behaviour.
Another thing to take into account is that the windows version of PHP uses VC++6 libraries, which were never fully C++ ANSI standards compliant, so that even if one has applied all the service packs and there were no bugs in the C++ implementation, the implementation and byte ordering of code on VC++6 will not be the same as that of Linux C++(typically ANSI compliant), and may result in unexpected behaviour.
These are but a few of the differences that can arise when working on different environments and that may result in unexpected behaviour on one of the environments.
Thus, as you point out, the demo is great for communicating and stating intended specifications, but an exact specification of the environment that the demo(s) is(are) working in will go a long way to ascertaining whether or not a bug exists within an enviroment - this bug perhaps due to human error in porting the code from one development environment to another, or because of programming-language compiler differences.
My suspicion is that your demo copy, being web-based, is running on Linux, given that LAMP is the most common web site configuration. It is possible that there is a bug on the Windows/XAMPP version of the code which results in failure to delete copay even when using the workaround.
bradymiller wrote on Wednesday, April 16, 2014:
Hi,
The environment information of all the demos can be found here:
http://open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/Development_Demo#Overview
And you can see the script that install all the demos below(first link), which is followed by the config file(second link) that the build script uses:
-brady
anthony2014 wrote on Wednesday, April 16, 2014:
(From http://open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/Development_Demo#Overview)
—>All of these demos are using the following:
—>Ubuntu 12.04
Exactly what I suspected: a Linux environment.
It’s possible that the issue I’m facing is a defect in the Windows/XAMPP version. However other users will have to confirm that.
fsgl wrote on Wednesday, April 16, 2014:
For future reference, information cited above, can also be found in phpMyAdmin within each Demo.
On my Windows 7 device, was able to use work-around both in the 2103 Demo and my production copy of OpenEMR. That tells me something non-kosher is happening on your end.
I presume that you are using Firefox to get to the 2103 Demo. Describe in excruciating detail what happened at the Fee Sheet for Jane Seymour for the 4/15/14 encounter.