my client would like to send a letter to a doctor associated with a given patient after the visit w that patient. i would like to do this with rod’s templates
i see how to set up a template and load it in (“Fetch”) - but that is entered for the patient, and therefore the letter is addressed to the patient, not to the physician that is associated w that patient. as an example, this could simply a letter thanking the doctor for referring the patient, as well as a personal introduction, etc.
2nd issue (related):
i am able to enter a physician into the address book but it then does not appear on the drop- down for the patient under ‘choices’. from what i understand, this is because it isn’t considered local (because i selected ‘specialist’ when entering the physicians name and address). but do i want to consider someone local , when they’re not? i am not sure i understand what ‘local’ means.
I’m hot on your trail. (You’re too young to remember “The Lone Ranger” & the “William Tell Overture”.)
Second issue needs to be addressed first.
“Local” meaning everyone in the practice. The physicians, PA’s, RN’s & NP’s who are under 1 roof at the same address.
O.K., I just checked in the 4.1.2 Demo. It is not necessary to choose a type, if you don’t want to, because any listing in the Address Book will appear in the drop-down for Referring Provider. Sorry for the misinformation earlier.
Once you have the names in Referring Providers, you can start to build the template. Download the sample file, woc.zip, from here to see how the keywords work. There is another file just below the screenshot & to the right (illustration) which will give you an idea of the finished product.
it doesn’t seem to matter what i do (whether local or not, or what i fill in - specialist etc): i’ve now entered two new entries using various combinations of these things in address book and neither appears in the dropdown for ‘choices’ for the patient.
see attached- i fill in the name and address for the doctor, but then in ‘choices’ the drop down shows only ‘unassigned’ (the default), plus the two that were already listed (the local ones - the client and ‘mine’ (the consulting company - ‘administrator’). when i try to determine what’s different about how those two are different from the new one i have entered, the only difference i see is that the local ones have those bottom fields filled in (UPIN, NPI, TIN, etc). does that matter?
it doesn’t seem to matter what i do (whether local or not, or what i fill in - specialist etc): i’ve now entered two new entries using various combinations of these things in address book and neither appears in the dropdown for ‘choices’ for the patient.
see attached- i fill in the name and address for the doctor, but then in ‘choices’ the drop down shows only ‘unassigned’ (the default), plus the two that were already listed (the local ones - the client and ‘mine’ (the consulting company - ‘administrator’). when i try to determine what’s different about how those two are different from the new one i have entered, the only difference i see is that the local ones have those bottom fields filled in (UPIN, NPI, TIN, etc). does that matter?
It appears that I misled you again. It’s not setup in Address Book, but Administration/Users. That does not make sense, but you have to do it that way. Just uncheck the Calendar box.
Looking at the code I see that to make an Address Book entry that is not a local provider appear in the Patient Summary in “Choices” for the “Referring Provider” drop down list it is necessary to include an NPI entry.
Thanks, guys! putting in the NPI did the trick. and i see that it is easy to generate a letter w this template w the referring doc’s info. fantastic!
follow-up question: apparently my client would like to generate more letters related to a given patient, not just to the referring doctor, but also to other doctors who are treating this patient. (tho not referring him.) she thinks at most another two such other doctors. any thoughts as to a good place in the program to add those other doctors to be able to generate similar letters? it would be good if they could be seen to be associated w this patient, rather than in a large general list of doctors she has in the database
A practice usually does not correspond with armies of physicians.
If you client does not use Box 17 & 17b in your claim submissions, then I would suggest limiting the number of letter recipients in the Address Book by giving only those folks NPI’s in the Address Book. This way the lookup in Referring Provider is shorter.
If you can’t do that, it’s going to be a lot tougher. You would have to create a new list for Address Book type, search only for physicians in that list & exclude all other physicians in the Address Book.
ok - maybe we can hold off for now on this idea to add doctors other than the referring one
here’s a question: i have gotten the template letter to work. e.g. it is filling “ReferringDOC” automatically. but i was also hoping to address a letter to the referring doctor. i.e., i will need to draw from the database the referring doc’s address, city, state, etc. i tried “ReferringDOCCity”, “ReferringDOCState”, etc but those come up blank. any ideas?