Request for a few minor(?) fixes

cerber98 wrote on Tuesday, April 17, 2012:

Hello!

After using the system for the past 3 months, I wanted to see if a few minor fixes that I believe would be helpful could be implemented at some point:
1. There is no “Close Window” button on the “EOB posting” window (the one accessed from Fees->Billing->EOBs, coded for by sl_eob_search.php). Because of that, the only way to close that window is to click on the “x” in the title bar, which looks slightly less professional.

2. Since patient statements are printed from that same screen, it would be nice to have, either hardcoded or modifiable through lists, some more options in addition to “All”, “Open”, “Due Pt”, and “Due Ins”. I would say the most important one would be “Due Pt (>30d)”, where those patients whose last statement (not service date) was sent out more than 30 days ago show up. This way, a second bill (or third and final bill) could be sent out more easily.
In addition, it would be nice to have a category of “Refund Owed”, so that we can print statements to send to patients with overpayments. I know there are other ways around this (such as selecting “Open”, then looking for those with negative balance), but this would save a lot of time and would probably be a useful feature for many clinics.

3. On the actual EOB posting window (sl_eob_invoice), there are several issues (?bugs), including the window going blank rather than closing the window after “Save” is pressed; a DELETE query being displayed for some reason when item are being delayed (there is a confirmation message first, then there is a command “echo $query” in the code, which displays the actual query syntax - probably from debugging at some point). Finally, after a delete is done, the window, once again, goes blank.

4. At this time, the only person’s name displayed in association with a note is the first person who entered any information. That way, when a medical assistant starts a note (ROS or SOAP, for example), it always says “SOAP” by (MA name). Since I modify the note afterwards and put in my diagnosis and treatment plan, shouldn’t it display my name on there (at least in addition to the MA’s name)? Perhaps it should be “SOAP” (or whatever form) by (whoever started the note), last modified by (whoever modified it last). Any thoughts on this. As of right now, in order to go around this issue, I end each note with “Signed by (my name)”.

Please let me know your thoughts on these. I can tackle some of the these issues, but they may be important for other clinics, too.

Thanks!

cerber98 wrote on Thursday, April 19, 2012:

Me again. I just made a few changes to the code to take care of issues #1 and 2 above. It works well and I believe it may be useful to others (it allows one to pull up the charts that need refund due to overpayment and those who haven’t paid in over 30 days (when the next notice is typically sent out). I would like to submit those changes for possible inclusion in a future patch, but I don’t know how to do that. Please advise…

I’ll try looking into issue #3 as well, but the last one is something that may be a bit more involved. How do others handle the fact that a form is displayed not with the provider’s name but with the name of the person who started the note? Any thoughts? Or could this be modified (perhaps as suggested by me above or in some other way)?

Thanks!

bradymiller wrote on Thursday, April 19, 2012:

Hi,

The best way to do this is to use git/github (if you do this, then it’s very easy for us to review/test/commit the code to the official codebase). Check out this tutorial on creating a working git/github OpenEMR repo and how to submit code through it:
http://open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/Git_for_dummies

-brady
OpenEMR

bradymiller wrote on Thursday, April 19, 2012:

Also,

The learning curve for git can be steep, so always feel free to ask any questions (there are several git gurus that monitor these forums).

thanks,
-brady