ideaman911 wrote on Thursday, March 19, 2009:
Brady (et al);
Part of the reason Dr Bowen has put up with me for so long is because he, like me, recognizes that most of the world for the forseeable future will be Windows and NOT Linux based. You are probably correct that I will have to learn the workings of Linux eventually if only to assure I can bridge the team’s efforts to that wider world. But I see my “niche” as Windows, if for no other reason than the number of you experts in Linux. Better to be a big fish in a small pond, so to speak 
As to the problems I have noted, there is plenty of anecdotal indication that some things which show up in Windows do not equally do so in Linux, and vice versa. All the more reason for para 1 above.
I will look at the info you have posted as soon as possible. But I also have other irons in the fire, so not sure how soon I can respond with full knowledge. But I do know what I reported above as problems, and you can find repeated queries in the forums about them, which have included people running Linux environments also. As a novice with them, I am however aware that there are a host of variations to platforms as selected by any one developer, one of the natural consequences of open-source. And nobody can be expected to be expert in all. Again, read para 1.
The parse and "COERCIBLE" errors are real and easily repeated in an XP environment by removing the fixes I advise from the as-distributed code. In the case of the latter, I can see that the intent was to build a sortation into the query. But it does not WORK that way in the XP environment, which uses the Xampp Apache & MySQL in the xampp-win32-1.4.13.zip distribution, and sees it simply as an extra argument it has no idea how to deal with.
My changing the php.ini was per the notes I found before I started working with OpenEMR when there were no Windows advisers, so they may be obsolete. But in the absence of indications otherwise, I presumed they were still required, since that Xampp distribution is the same as before. Since setting the $magic_quotes_glc off seems to work fine for 2.9.1dev (as it did for 2.9.0), you can see why I noted it. And the php.ini file itself warns against leaving $register_globals ON for production, so it made sense to change both.
As I noted in the forums, the changes to Encounters.php going from 2.9 to 3.0 are substantial. But the posting "echo" statement which results in the printing of each encounter date in the resulting table for each patient can be preceded immediately with something like the following, which was the specific code for 2.9.1dev near 274:
$just = “”; // Make Justify & Billed tags print beneath encounter date 2/22/09 JCH
$jcpt = “CPT4”;
$jtmp = sqlQuery("SELECT justify, bill_date, code_type, activity FROM billing WHERE " .
“pid = ‘$pid’ AND code_type = ‘$jcpt’ AND activity AND encounter = '” . $iter[‘encounter’] . “’”);
if (substr($jtmp[‘code_type’], 0, 3) == “CPT” && !$jtmp[‘justify’]) {
$just = ‘<br>’ . “Justify” . ‘<br><br>’; }
if (substr($jtmp[‘code_type’], 0, 3) == “CPT” && strlen($jtmp[‘bill_date’] > 3)) {
$just = ‘<br>’ . “1st Billed” . ‘<br>’ . substr($jtmp[‘bill_date’], 0, 10) . ‘<br><br>’; }
echo “<td valign=‘top’>$linkbeg$raw_encounter_date$just$linkend</td>\n”; // Added $just which is tag 2/22/09 JCH
I am pretty certain the "echo" statement in 3.0 has removed the $linkbeg & $linkend, but is otherwise pretty similar. So, absent some significant logic change, this should work there as well with the fix to add the $just as a concatenate to the current $raw_encounter_date.
As to the addition of the encounter date in the Billing listing, the code below is again for 2.9.1dev, but I expect it would be very similar in 3.0, although I have not yet had a chance to get into the code for it.
In …/billing/billing_report.php does not display encounter date as distributed. So modified to look like the following from near line 524 to display encounter date in "To Encounter" button, and reduce buttons size to offset added size for date
$ptname = $name[‘fname’] . " " . $name[‘lname’];
$raw_encounter_date = date(“Y-m-d”, strtotime($iter[‘enc_date’]));
// Add Encounter Date to display with “To Encounter” button 2/17/09 JCH
$lhtml .= “ <span class=bold><font color=’$namecolor’>$ptname” .
“</font></span><span class=small> (” . $iter[‘enc_pid’] . “-” .
$iter[‘enc_encounter’] . “)</span>”;
// Not sure why the next section seems to do nothing except post “To Encounter” button, but added encounter date 2/17/09 JCH
$lhtml .= " <a class="link_submit" " .
“href="javascript:window.toencounter(” . $iter[‘enc_pid’] .
“,’” . addslashes($name[‘pubpid’]) .
“’,’” . addslashes($ptname) . “’,” . $iter[‘enc_encounter’] .
“,’$raw_encounter_date’)">[To Enctr – $raw_encounter_date]</a>”;
// Changed “To xxx” buttons to allow room for encounter date display 2/17/09 JCH
$lhtml .= " <a class="link_submit" " .
“href="javascript:window.topatient(” . $iter[‘enc_pid’] .
“)">[To Dems]</a>”;
As distributed, CMS 1500 forms and X12 will generate without a Justify, which means without the clinician’s “release”. But we need to list them so we can see when they need the justify done. You can modify near line 704 in …/billing/billing_report.php (also modified near 201 to indicate need for selecting “Fit-To-Page” when printing 1500 unless you change the margin values from 30 to 5 starting near line 119 in …/classes/class.ezpdf.php) to include ‘&& strlen($justify) > 2’ within the conditional test so that only encounters with justifications done will be billable. That should reduce returns & errors. However, it was found that those with Copays entered via the Fee Sheet would not bill due to spelling of COPAY and CPT, neither of which could be changed due to logical considerations elsewhere.
At worst with the addition of the code below inserted between the current if statement and the else statement near line 712 in …/billing/billing_report.php only those with copays from the fee sheet will potentially be billed before they have been justified, which is still better than the as-distributed situation:
else if ($iter[‘id’] && $last_encounter_id != $this_encounter_id && $iter[‘code_type’] == “COPAY”) {
$tmpbpr = $iter[‘bill_process’];
if ($tmpbpr == ‘0’ && $iter[‘billed’]) $tmpbpr = ‘2’;
$rhtml .= “<td><input type=‘checkbox’ value=’$tmpbpr’ name='claims[” . $this_encounter_id . “][bill]’ onclick=‘set_button_states()’> </td>\n”;
}
My final input (for now, anyway is regards the calendar. I still prefer the “fancy” version vs the Outlook version, because of immediacy of information, especially with the “Month” view. I note that Jason fixed the display of only a Pt DOB, but otherwise left it pretty much as-is. I would suggest, and plan to use in all versions myself to allow for multiple service locations, but with a single billing location easily shown (I discussed this with Rod Roark, and disagree with the feasibility of using different facilities because of text match problems, especially at Medicare), To add House Call and other service locations to calendar and to encounter drop-down to allow substitution of POS in claims, add them as New Categories in Admin - Calendar as House Call color #FFFF99 (for example) duration 1 Hr (3600) and change Office Visit to 1 Hr if desired (3600), and add TC Conference color Red IN THAT ORDER and verify with BROWSE in openemr_postcalendar_categories database in Admin to verify House Call has pc_catid = 12 also - these will display in Encounter view/new as drop-down selections. Then add conditionals in …/library/claim.class.php at Function for POS near line 527, and do same for SNF, or other service locations as appropriate to enter correct code override. Logic shown allows select substitution for claim of whatever form_encounter[‘pc_catid’] is in table with whatever POS code is required for proper claim submission, to replace POS code defined for facility as default. Codes listing can be found in …/library/classes/POSRef.class.php and details are available at CMS website.
And on the calendar note, having only a start time and patient name (if available) with all the available space seems under-engineered. My client wants to have at least the "comments" able to display, especially for other than patient appointments, so she can know WHY they are and WHAT they are. "Out" is insufficient, and adding the comments would seem to be a minor change. Is that possible? Could it be switchable via the globals.php, so it would not be required (some would probably want it kept limited per access rules)?
Thanks for the soapbox
Joe Holzer