Hello, Liliya, and welcome to Amazing Charts.
One thing you will learn quickly is that are often multiple ways to accomplish things with this EMR, and you will sometimes get an assortment of suggestions from different users. You will also find that sometimes people will try to talk you out of what you set out to do. This is one of those times...
When we converted our records from paper, we decided to scan a large number of records. We scanned essentially all of the charts from 15 years of practice. Keep in mind that I am a gastroenterologist and so the average chart is different from that of a primary care physician. They tend to be a lot smaller and less diverse in their content. My motivation to do so came partly from the fact that many of my patients might only see me every 3 to 5 years and it was important to have those old records. (Of course my staff felt that my main motivation to scan everything was my obsessive, anal-retentive nature).
My initial intent was to divide the charts into multiple sections, just as you describe. Ultimately, we decided not to. First, this is a very time-consuming effort. Separating, sorting, and labeling all the sections of each chart is very labor-intensive. Secondly, while it is very useful to have this information as a reference, much of it is rarely if ever used. So I would suggest that you reconsider your plan and consider scanning in old records in batch fashion. You might import them all as one document or you might separate a few important items (such as a problem list, lab flowsheet, and most recent EKG) and put them as a second, separate document that can be quickly accessed.
If you decide to go ahead with your plan as you describe it, realize that creating your own 21 subject headings for each chart will be a maddening process. As you have noticed, this must be re-done for each and every patient. Old headings are not remembered by the program.
I agree with Marty that UpDox could be very helpful in your workflow if you decide to go ahead with your plan. We did not have this option because the current version of UpDox was not available when we went paperless, but I believe it could be helpful to you. Parenthetically, UpDox is an extremely valuable program. It is difficult to envision exactly what it does and how it is helpful. Its functions are somewhat diverse. I will try to describe concisely how it would help in your situation. Imagine a chart with 50 pages. The first step would be to scan it into UpDox. You are now sitting at your monitor looking at thumbnails of those 50 pages. You can easily go through and pick which will go into each category. Suppose you select 10 pages that are progress notes. You click on each of those 10 pages and import them into the patient's chart. The beauty is that you can create a category entitled "progress notes" in UpDox, and that will be remembered from patient to patient. You complete that chart and move onto the next one, and you don't need to create a new category for progress notes or any of the other choices you create. Still a painful process, but better (I think) than re-typing "progress notes" to create that category for each of your charts.
Either way, best of luck. Feel free to come back with more questions.
