Exams help

cbezuidenhout wrote on Monday, February 20, 2012:

Hi All,

We have been looking at the exams section of history, how do we handle repeat exams ?

if a patient has an ECG now and another on in 6 months, we would like to have a record of both, we want to make sure we haven’t missed something before developing anything.

thanks
  - Craig
    Tajemo Enterprises

bradymiller wrote on Tuesday, February 21, 2012:

Hi,

The history module will save a new entry in the history table every time you save. So, the data can always be found. The thing that is tough is that a date is associated with the database entry itself, however many of the data items (such as EKG) do not have discrete date entries (an exception to this is the Lifestyle entries). If an item (such as the EKG) does not have a discrete date associated with it, then can be tough to discern the date the EKG was done by automated means; for example, can’t really use the CDR engine to create rules to follow this. That being said, the CDR engine rules are used to check smoking stuff in the lifestyle entries of the history module. Something that would be really useful, would be to add a discrete Date item to the General History items (to the right); I think I discussed a way to do this previously, let me know if you want me to hunt down the forum link to that.
-brady

cbezuidenhout wrote on Tuesday, February 21, 2012:

Thanks, I was involved in that discussion (I think) it was when we added the date picker to the exams.

but if it is part of the history, can a record of past exams be found in OpenEMR, if so where would I find it ?

Thanks
  - Craig
    Tajemo Enterprises

bradymiller wrote on Thursday, February 23, 2012:

Hi,
That data is all there in history_data. However, the openemr function (function getHistoryData() in library/patient.inc script) is only written to collect the most recent one (can provide a start/end date to limit this which was added to support the CDR engine). In a way, the history_data table functions like a log (every time it is saved a new row is added), and could probably figure out a way to track multiple exams (such as EKGs) in it, but still think will need to add discrete dates to the entries that plan to do this to (like the lifestyle entries).
-brady