jcahn2 wrote on Friday, April 01, 2011:
Yes! Please try to keep administrative functions separate from clinical encounters. Even some clinical items like lab draws, Holter monitor removal, PFT’s and the like, could be kept off of the encounter list and reduce clutter IMO. Jack
mike-h30 wrote on Friday, April 01, 2011:
Yes! Please try to keep administrative functions separate from clinical encounters. Even some clinical items like lab draws, Holter monitor removal, PFT’s and the like, could be kept off of the encounter list and reduce clutter IMO. Jack
That’s easier said than done based on the current design of accessing forms (custom or standard) in OpenEMR (unless I am missing something). There is no way to access a custom form without creating an encounter. I am not talking about printing out a form to fill out by hand(i.e. the “Blank Forms” menu). We have converted our paper forms to web forms to store the form fields in a database table in order to track and run reports on each form’s db table. How are others handling this scenario? Thanks.
-Mike
jcahn2 wrote on Friday, April 01, 2011:
Then is it possible to label an encounter as “clinical” so that it can be retrieved by that tag later for display in the “visit” list?
jcahn2 wrote on Friday, April 01, 2011:
Also, is there any mechanism for archiving old visits? Keep them in the same place but if marked “archive” will be skipped in searches and not displayed in the drop down. Jack
mukoya wrote on Friday, April 01, 2011:
Jack,
Ingenious Idea!
I am in radiology and what happens in the many radiology image distribution systems called PACS, is that the server has intelligent rules to decide when, among other things, a study is unlikely to be accessed soon. The PACS I use has tiers of storage and images are automatically migrated between these tiers, compressed and eventually deleted if necessary.
For an EMR, we can have two selectable choices, automatic and manual archiving. We can have rules say, that if a certain patient records have not been accessed for 6 months, they are moved to the archive and one has to check a “Include Archived Records” check box during a search to include them. We can even have 2 levels of archiving, > than 6 months and > 12 months(duration configurable to suite practice). Any manual settings of a record will override automated engine settings.
Especially where I work (Kenya, East Africa) most patients are walk-ins and will probably never show up again for their lifetime! We shouldn’t have to bog down our system resources going through their records 10 year later.
Mukoya.
mike-h30 wrote on Friday, April 01, 2011:
Then is it possible to label an encounter as “clinical” so that it can be retrieved by that tag later for display in the “visit” list?
Yes, encounters can be assigned a “type” at time of creation. Though it seems that encounters are meant to be clinical by default.
Also, is there any mechanism for archiving old visits? Keep them in the same place but if marked “archive” will be skipped in searches and not displayed in the drop down.
This would also be good to move entire patients to archive to limit them from search results and just display active patients.