HELP! - Not sure when this started however, this isn’t working for us at all since we’ve been using that comment box for 12 years for time critical appointment related staff communications because it seemed to us, that was originally it’s intended purpose from the time we began using it. There was and is still no other place to conveniently post such comments (Office Notes is too many clicks away from and has no direct connection to the calendar) Searching the forum, I discovered a post from 4 years ago suggesting this field should be changed to “Chief Complaint”, but hijacking this comment box makes no sense when there is already a global setting for a default “Reason for Visit” in the encounter form which could be used for that purpose. Changing the long standing purpose of this important communications feature has created a major problem with our workflow, and now that this is being inserted into the patient’s clinical record where it does not belong, everyone from staff to the Medical Director is up in arms and wants this fixed ASAP.
Hi David, no clue how to recreate this. How about some screen shots or workflow to reproduce unless someone else knows what you’re talking about. I’ve never noticed those comments.
Hi Jerry,
It seems as if anything entered into the Calendar Comments now appears in the Header of the Visit Summary portion of the patient’s Clinical Record and in the Reason column of the Flow Board.
To get everyone off the warpath, I was going to create a textbox in the demographics area like I did for Insurance and No-Call No-Show notes however, I can’t locate that function. Has it been removed?
@hitechelp Recently the encounter i.e. New Patient form was converted from PHP template to a twig template. Twigifying is an ongoing lifecycle modernization project.
So it looks like the encounters reason for visit in the encounter report was moved from its own line in the report to the title.
IMO this is okay for one line reasons but many times it could be a paragraph so, it needs to be fixed to resemble the old report. An fairly easy fix.
The reason the calendar comment is shown is because it is a mechanism of the auto create encounter on @Arrived status change.
I’ll see what I can do to get you a quick fix and post here. It’d be just one file that’d need to be replaced.
Until then!
@hitechelp
Replace this interface/forms/newpatient/templates/report.html.twig with attached and let me know.
report.html.twig (628 Bytes)
Thank you Jerry,
Going in now, testing tonight, will advise.
That moves it out of the title however, it’s still there. We’ve lost the valuable function of the Comments box to access and convey timely appointment information to the entire staff with a single click from the calendar. We cannot have the administrative appointment comments (which was the original intent of that comment box) appearing in the Clinical Records.
I’m sorry. I have no clue or have ever heard of this function. Description is vague i.e. what clinical record, where? What version openemr did this work in? Where click in calendar to instigate?
Sounds custom to me or perhaps somebody out there can shed some light.
By clinical record I mean the PHI part of the patient record, i.e. Encounter notes, Patient Summary or a Continuity of Care Record. This issue showed up after we upgraded to v7.01. Click the time in an appointment slot, then add a comment. That comment will then be shown in the Patient Summary.
This data field was never intended as a place to insert a “Chief Complaint” or “Reason For Visit” Those fields are redundantly contained in both the Encounter Form and Visit Summary respectively. The former having a global setting for a entering a default “Reason for Visit” which doesn’t actually set a default reason for visit in the Visit Summary. (but that’s another kettle of fish)
Now, when we print out or download a medical record, it looks really unprofessional with our calendar comments showing there. So for now we’ll have to quit using it. 
It was great while it lasted.
The calendar comment box is best left for annotating administrative appointment related matters relevant to workflow operations such as late arriving patients, missed or failed confirmations, which staff member called or texted, etc.
For now I’m going to add a text box to Demographics to handle the loss of use of this comment box.
@hitechelp Well David I personally don’t like to see a legacy feature arbitrarily removed or one that seems to now be misunderstood.
You’ve been around openemr a couple years longer than me and this is an area I’ve not spent much time developing in however, I’m going to research to try to figure out where this all got waylaid so to speak!
One thing right away is we should make the reason in new encounters from appointment comment an option. I don’t know when this was added or if always there but assume it was added from an user request.
Now I have a better idea of how this used to work and where, I should be able to come up with a solution. Stay tuned!
Thank you Jerry,
Making that an option a great idea, leaving it up to the user keeps it flexible and that’s good IMO.
I must have been thinking about this during the night, because when I woke up this morning I envisioned a simple fix for this by adding a few new line items to the Appointment Status list. The staff can now communicate appointment issues by selecting one of the newly added shorthand codes from the status drop down list. Since this all takes place before the patient arrives, it doesn’t affect the clinical or billing workflow that happens after the encounter is created.
I also found a YouTube video that Sherwin Gladdis posted that touched on this issue.
Charting for the first time in v7.0.2, Filling out information about the patient - YouTube
This is the same issue we have been battling a long time.
The Comment in the appointment modal is used for communication between team members. Here is an example:
The comment then appears on the flow board for all team members to see. However, the title of the column is “reason” (which might be the source of confusion):
Finally, for the patient encounter form, the “Comment” from the team is the “Reason for Visit” on the encounter:
@hitechelp – I don’t know if this solution would be of use for your team, but over here it would be AMAZING if the Title was used in the Reason for Visit:
Thanks for bringing this issue up @hitechelp and thanks for your help with this @sjpadgett
I thought I fixed this! It will be in patch.
I totally agree that the Comments section at the bottom of the Calendar Appointments window was always intended for calendar related team communications matters that were never previously included in patient forms or records. I also agree with changing the “Reason” column of the Flow Board to; “Comments:” to indicate proper use and may reduce confusion.
I’d also like to point out a redundancy in the Calendar Appointment window where the “Category” drop list auto-fills the “Title” box, which is now of no use as it is no longer used to populate the headers of forms and records.
The idea that the “Title” box could be used for entering the “Reason for Visit” is interesting. Although a “Default Reason for Visit” box already exists in Admin>Config>Encounter Form, whatever you put there doesn’t appear anywhere that I can find. Therefore, I would suggest that the “Title” box be changed to a drop-list and renamed “Reason For Visit” with a default value (if desired) being set using the list management functions. This would maximize function, versatility and utility, especially if the list contained a text field to add new list items. It could then be used to populate titles and descriptions in various headers found in other forms and clinical records as in the past.
When editing an Encounter, one finds the “Visit Category” entry matches the “Category” drop-list from the Calendar>Appointments window but the “Reason For Visit” is being populated from the “Comments”.
So is the encounter reason for visit supposed to have comment in RFV title? That’s the way it was but David said it shouldn’t be there so I moved to its own line. Or did I misunderstand.
I’d like to get this corrected for patch but I need to hurry so I need consensus on all flow for comment.
It should not be in the Visit Summary report header title. Your fix correctly reverts the behavior to the way it was before the report was twig-ified.
Core issue is that it is one database field that should be two.
“reason” in form_encounter is populated from “pc_hometext” in openemr_postcalendar_events and used wherever a “reason for visit” makes sense, which conflicts with what should happen with an administrative comment like how David and Sarah are using it.
Thank you @Jason X. It seems we all agree the Visit Summary report header title should be the Reason for Visit (RFV) and not the Calendar Comments. So the remaining question is; where will the staff enter the RFV? On the Encounter Form seems like a pain, from a drop-list in the Calendar Appointment window as I suggested would make it easy, timely and convienent IMO.
Jerry, I don’t understand your question. There may have been a misunderstanding because the fix you sent me did not prevent Calendar Comments from appearing in the Visit Summary Report, it only moved them to the second line in the header.
David, I don’t have an easy way to check, but I think the comment/reason has been in the report header for some time, just not in the title?