Thanks @MatthewVita - responding inline… hopefully things won’t get too messy here.
Does “Facility” properly cover both Ward and Clinic?
Facilities can be clinics, yes. They can also be a nursing home, lab testing location, a hospital, etc. I’m still not sure I fully understand wards though. I have always used the terms unit and ward as one-in-the-same and understand that wards mean different things to people around the world!
- If a “ward” is going to be Unit type than each “Location” would need to show:
– Facility (maybe?)
– Unit (e.g. ward a, b, c, d)
– Room (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4)
– Bed (e.g. 1, 2, 3 , 4)
Would love to know if people are currently using different facilities to keep track of each area/ward of the hospital and/or if this use-case would be considered ideal.
Would being able to categorize facility types be less (or more) confusing?
Hmm, not sure I follow.
- Not relevant. Your answer to the above question covers this postulate.
What is onset/hosp. date currently used for?
This is the date of problem onset or hospitalization prior to the service date. Useful for HCFA billing in the outpatient setting
- Good to know. Sounds like we’re expecting check in/out time to be tracked automatically based on status changes then. If not, we’d need a separate field for intake/discharge.
Will this encounter field be confusing for hospital users?
Encounters are used in a lot of settings. Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAP_note to see how our SOAP form in an encounter fits into everything. Key thing to note with an encounter is the duration:
inpatient care == continuous increments of time
outpatient care == transactional visits
- I was able to confirm with @robert.down in our chat that only appointments contain the Status information I am looking for… the Appointment encounter type will keep track of intake/discharge and allow patients to appear on the flow board. This is fine given that appointments are so closely tied to the Patient Flow interface that I’m relying on in this solution.
- We could also modify the current Encounter interface to track the patient Status like we do in appointments and either:
– Create a separate flow board for inpatient only
– Allow for inpatient statuses to appear on the existing flowboard
… Without knowing enough about the architecture of the current Patient Flow, I am nervous about recommending this option.
Do we need sub-units? It seems that Unit == Room so what if there are
These are the “beds”. Facility > Unit > Room > Bed.
- Great! Can we roll this up into a “Location” field/object?
Types of rooms? Or rooms that contain sections? Like an ER?
I wonder if there should be an interface to note where the patients are when not in their assigned room. Not sure!
- If we need this, I think it could just be a separate Status like “In Transit” - similar to how we use “Chart Pulled” today.
-Dani