I am writing from a small clinic that has just recently gone live with OpenEMR. Currently they are using it mainly for the SOAP form and vitals, and I am trying to bring new functionality online for them.
My first project is bringing the pharmacy and inventory system online. We have a small pharmacy here at the clinic. I understand how to add medications to the pharmacy, but do not understand the proper use of the Medications and Prescriptions fields in the patients chart.
I would assume that the Medications box is meant to show active patient medications, while the prescriptions box is meant to show prescribed medications that are not filled or active. I think my understanding is incorrect when designing a workflow however, as the medications do not drop off of the prescripions list after they are dispensed.
Can somebody please describe the purpose and proper use of these sections (the medications and prescriptions sections) of the patient’s chart? Also, does anybody have a suggestion for a workflow starting with the doctor prescribing a medication all the way through the pharmacy dispensing the medication, as well as how to track which medications were prescribed in the past?
Sorry for the delayed reply.
Medications shows active medications.
Prescriptions are for writing/recording prescriptions.
(the lists are essentially independent of each other)
For example, a specialist will want to know the complete medication list, but will only fill/prescribe certain medications (for example, heart failure meds if a cardiologist). Or if somebody only prescribes a 3 day course abx for a uti, they may not wish to put it on the Medications list.
Regarding tracking, I think there is room for improvement here. Although everything is logged, there is not a specific mechanism to specifically track medications and prescriptions changes.
For the medications section, do medications drop off of this list if you include an end date for them?
Could you clarify on the prescriptions section for me? Is the intent to have a comprehensive list of prescriptions that have ever been prescribed to the patient? Or is it recommended to remove prescriptions from patient’s charts at some point?
If place an end date and go beyond the end date, then they become inactive(not sure if they show on the main list after that; recommend testing that out).
This likely depends on what workflow the practice wishes to use. I think most would not want to delete rx’s though, but would instead make them inactive(ie. thus keeping list of rxs that have ever been prescribed).
As you are likely realizing, there is room for improvement here. This rx/med module doesn’t seem to get to much attention since there is a 3rd party options that bypasses this: http://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/OpenEMR_ePrescribe
Note that Sherwin is working on a Weno eRX module that uses the native OpenEMR rx/med module, which is exciting because it will force us to improve this module.