Hi, I am new to OpenEMR. I tried to answer my own question by searching the forum but was not successful so here it goes. I am a doctor and one of the things I want in an EMR is the ability to at least have a basic exam template. I can’t find a place to customize the soap notes.
The second question is Is there a way to have the soap note pull the "Issues" into the note when it is open. i.e. pull the problem list and medication list into the note.
OpenEMR comes with a large number of "encounter forms" (many of these must be copied from the contrib/forms directory) and one of these may already do what you want. If not, then someone will need to create a custom template for you. This is not unusual.
There is more than one way to do it, which can be good or bad, depending on how you look at it. Some people use the dictation form, which is basically a big text box to write their soap note. You can have text templates saved elsewhere and copy and paste them over. There is also a SOAP form which has four text boxes, one for each element of the note. If you are comfortable with command line utilities, there is a form making tool which you can use to make your own custom forms.
If you want to do it the way I do, and I am a practicing primary care physician, I would recommend the CAMOS form. You have to go to Admin->Forms and install it, as you would any new form. It is a great tool for saving and organizing a wide variety of templates. You can see a demonstration of it on youtube. Just search for ‘openemr’. Not only does CAMOS help you enter notes quickly and easily, it allows for nicely formatted printing of your notes and prescriptions. Since there are many possible configurations and systems on which OpenEMR can run, if you have trouble getting this form to work on your system, ask questions here and I will do my best to answer and help you get things up and running.