Gentlemen,
Here's the missing piece of the puzzle. If one "inactivates" a patient, any encounters you made for that patient in the past should NOT go away. They did have visits then, they did pay a co-pay, they were part of the practice during those past dates. So old inactive patients need to be taken off the database in a much different, way. Their old data stays as it should, but as of their inactivation date, and should we be able to actually assign one, what date they officially left the practice could eventually be very important one day. Were they our patient on a certain date or not when something awful happened or they needed late night care or something.
But, these "false" and other "non" patients should always be part of a separate part, side or what have you of the database. They should never, ever hit the regular database and it's data. They never have and never will exsist! I can't believe we are debating this so much. Most other programs have this feature. It just makes so much common sense since once you chart something it is there forever, so then simply allow folks a place to play and create interesting scenarios, and add a few family members. I've got a high-tech EMR but I have to make a paper chart for my two kids? Come on...
And then there is still the issue of design the database and it's features around how a real office works and what it has to deal with on a daily basis. We still need my TEMP chart, file thing for all those inquiriers that call, make appointments, no-show, never live to make appointment, they were auto assigned by some stupid HMO or the patient used a dart board to "Pick a doc" out of the HMO's handbook or website. We need to document and track these pain in the neck, potentially dangerous patients, that never the less, never became real patients. They are not real patients, I do not see them, nor should you (you better hope a judge doesn't either) see them as real patients or as real patients that went in-active. There needs to be a real way to track and more importantly "classify" these difficult people and situations. We need that data unto itself for just such purposes. No work around, but instead a firm tracking of them for how and what they really are. People who interacted with our offices and staff, but still never had an establishing visit to consumate the actual Doctor/Patient relationship. Am I making sense here? And isn't this what we need an EMR/PM to track, record and maintain for us and for the protection of our providers??? I certainly think so and I hope so do all of you.
Again I don't write programs, but to have a TEMP area that allows for the development of a record, that can either stay there forever if need be with it's assigned TEMP number, or can be assigned to the Regular database in proper sequence, then never again go TEMP, all while retaining and taking with it any of that TEMP info, is key here. This is how it really works in our offices every day. I would bet for every one thousand patients a provider has there may be as many as 50-100 never established patients that none the less, may come back to bite your behind one day when you least expect it. And they are NOT real patients. Period, short, the end. And so they should not be in your regular database, or appear as regular patients, or even patients that went inactive. They are what they are, and our database should have a way of tracking them as they are not make them appear to be possibly something else. And their data if added to our regular database, is really inapproproiate. It may be a difficult thing to program, but this is how our offices work and what we most protect ourselves from. Plain and simple.
Makes sense to me....Have a great night....
Paul
