Pop up patient chart alert feature - proposal

markleeds wrote on Thursday, August 03, 2006:

I was thinking of doing this for my office.  It may be useful to others.  It should be easy to do.

When you go into a patient chart, if there are any alert notifications, money to collect, message to give to the patient, labs that must be done…anything that you want to make sure you or your staff are clearly reminded of on the next visit, an alert window would pop up with a list of messages including a delete button, the date and time the message was entered and maybe a link to the encounter where the message was entered.

If there are no alerts, the popup will not pop up and the feature would be invisible to those who do not use it.

Data would be entered through an encounter form.  The alert would still be recorded in the encounter even after deleting it as an alert in the popup window.

There could also be a similar popup at the main screen with all patient alerts which can be brought up by clicking a link.  This would be similar to the one in the chart but would also include the patient’s name which would be a link into the chart.

I am going to get to work on it because we could really use it in our office.

sunsetsystems wrote on Thursday, August 03, 2006:

This sounds a lot like what I already did with patient notes.  I.e. patient notes can be specifically addressed to individual staff members, rerouted, closed, etc.

Perhaps what you want is an alternative note destination, one that makes it pop up for whoever opens the patient.

Let’s try to improve on features that already exist, and not have multiple features with overlapping functionality and different interfaces.

Rod
www.sunsetsystems.com

markleeds wrote on Thursday, August 03, 2006:

That sounds like a great idea.  I’ll take a look at that.

That’s why I brought it up here, so I wouldn’t waste time on something that’s already done.

Thanks!

drbowen wrote on Monday, August 07, 2006:

This is part of the decision support system that we have discussed previously and for the most part is not a duplication of the existing functionality.  The current patient notes works best to document on-going “conversations” such as telephone calls, pharmacy calls etc.

What Dr. Leeds is suggesting are pop that are stored to warn of future events.  “Forget-me-nots”.  Many of this are general alerts and not assigned to a specific staff member.  Such as Dr. Leeds’ example of “this patient owes $780 dollars and is not making any attempt to make payment on this account.  The patient needs to discuss a payment plan prior to receiving additional services.

Specific diagnoses in the the problem list should trigger recurring pop-ups on a regular schedule.  For instance,  any diagnosis of diabetes mellitus, an A1c is due every 90 days.  A check on microalbuminuria is due annually.  Etc. 

Certain regular monitoring events should occur to help remind when this events are overdue. 

Females over the age of 18 need annual pap smears up to the age of “x” years.  Married women over the age of 45 the event might be set to occur every three years. Women who have hysterectomies for non-gyn cancer related cancers the pop-up could be turned off.

I think this could be a very useful start on a decision support system.

Sam Bowen, MD

blankev wrote on Thursday, September 24, 2009:

Mark Leeds, I found this rather outdated message, and since it gives an interesting view on how to alert the important things.

Question: was it established in OpenEMR and how can it be activated or why was it rejected or unfinished?

TNX, Pimm

vambati wrote on Sunday, February 12, 2012:

Are there any updates on this feature? any further details of actived or rejected or unfinished?

Thank you
venkat.

bradymiller wrote on Monday, February 13, 2012:

Hi,

An “Active Alert” from the Clinical Decision Rules engine will produce a pop up when opening a patient screen. Recommend reading through the CDR engine doc for details(Number 3 and number 6 in below page are what to look at):
http://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/CDR_User_Manual

-brady