Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Jon/Dr. Meyer what is in pipeline?

Now that the latest beta is official,

what is in pipeline?
Can you give a preview?.
Regards.

LOL.. I wish I knew.. Jon doesn't tell me what he's working on to any great detail.

I've added a couple of things to the template parser that will probably make it to the next version, as they're very trivial patches.

I'm working on a new template system, which organizes the templates into nested folders, with full drag-and-drop support, but it will be completely up to Jon if it is something he's going to want to incorporate or not.

Another thing I started working on - which I'd like some feedback on from the group before I pitch it to Jon, is context sensitive comboboxes on the medication form. Currently this is loaded with "One tablet daily", "One tablet BID", etc, plus "Apply to affected area BID", etc. What I started on last night is to load the pull-down choices in the SIG box with entries appropriate for the dose form, based on the text in the name of the medication For example, if you're prescribing "Celebrex capsules 200mg", it would see a word containing "capsule" in it and the choices would be "One CAPSULE daily", etc. If the name contains "cream" or "ointment" only have the directions for topical medications in the pull-down, things like that. Means there are less entries in the pull-down menu, which will speed things up when you prescribe. I know it sounds silly, but is something that bugs me, so I'm gonna fix it.

I also added a feature that allows sending "orders" to a second e-mail box. In our office all the referrals go to the "referral" mailbox, all records requests go to the "records" mailbox. If you have a radiology tech in house and want to send her an x-ray order without having to forward the chart, this works great.. we've found a ton of things to use it for in-house. So far, though, Jon hasn't shown any interest in accepting this one. I plan to bring it up again when he's got the things he's currently working on out of the way.

I have a few more goodies I'm working on, but too early to really talk about them.

You have to understand - I do not work for Jon. I am, however, in a unique position. Because of my 25+ years of computer engineering experience, Jon has given me the ability to fix bugs and make changes in the code. Sometimes the changes I suggest make sense and he uses them, sometimes he can't quite follow my wisdom, and he doesn't.

Mostly I'm looking to make changes that save me or my staff time. Having the quantities and directions in a prescription in pull-downs saves me 20 minutes per day.

I know Jon and his team are hard at it trying to get the lab interface to be solid. I don't know if I'm at liberty to disclose any of the new features that they're working on, but if Jon says I can spill the beans, I will :-)

It looks like the message board "polling" feature is turned on, so maybe we can list possible features and have the users vote on which ones they want. I talked to Jon about allowing attachments, but when they had them before the board got spammed by porn, which was a problem. I don't know if the forum software will allow adding another forum where all entries are moderated, but allow attachments - that way if there is spam I can delete it before it hits the group.

Feedback welcome,

V.

I remember when the board was spammed by porn. And by people selling those miracle products. You know, like the ones that make you a "bigger male." It was pretty bad.

Vinny,

Thanks for the updates and the logistics of how you work wih Jon. Always wondered about that. I like the idea of polling, because my programmer who make 3rd party medical software always reminds me that the features I want may not be the features others want. So, it's either no go or preferences/options.

The other more important thing I learn from him is that at some point after adding more and more features, you have to step back and Beta test and/or tweak the features you have.

This is just an opinion and one I hear from others at times, but some of us feel that it would be helpful to work a little more on the little things (like the drop down list) and a little less on the major projects such as lab interfaces. Then again, I understand, there is probably a provider down the street that ca't wait to interface with Quest. So, it's a no win situaton, I guess.

As always, thanks for your work with AC and your valuable input.

Hmm.. rather than a "no-win" look at it as a "win-win". If Jon focuses on adding the new features and I focus on streamlining the old features, then everybody can get their work out the door and get home in time for dinner.

V.

Hi Dr. Meyer:

Thanks for your reply.
I also added a feature that allows sending "orders" to
a second e-mail box.
I would like this feature to be developed into full fledged referral feature of AC.

Keep up the good work.
Regards.

Small suggestions Vinny?

How about an extension for the business phone in the demographics.

Currently there is no way for you have the same drug with different dosages in the medication list.

Renewed Rx are only recorded with a renewed date. Should really be the full Rx with dosage and refills.

Full look up table for the pharmacy (name, address, fax number, etc) instead of a single text line?

Date of Serice!!! Not everybody charts everything the same day. Nancy frequently starts a chart at the time of the encounter, but feels wrong charting more than talking and listening, so she is always forwarding charts to her in-box to finish later. But frequently she forgets to make sure she's got the correct DOS with what she is charting. Yes I wish she would chart every encounter at the exact time of that encounter, but that is unrealistic. We should be able to change the DOS, with such changes being properly noted, just as we could do in a paper chart. Also, we should be able to add an extra note of two, to an already signed encounter. And yes of course that too should be properly noted too, just as in a paper chart.

And we would really love, my past suggestion of allowing mid-levels and other staff members the ability to write almost anything, letters, notes, Rx, all while having the proper providers name signed to it. Then the provider could approve such things, edit them, flush them (with no trace that it ever happen then) or make a note that she didn't fill the patient's requested control substance or what have you. But in an old fashioned paper office, staff can write letters and Rx's with the doc's name of them, put them on her desk or quickly ask for her signature and then finish them up for their provider. We need a system in AC, probably thru the inter-office email or something to allow us, e-charters to do the same. Right now our provider is the bottleneck in our office. But how can she not be??? Every little thing needs to either go thru her or be generated directly by her... That's just insane. Let me write the letter and she simply approves it; send it back to me, to finish printing, folding, and stamping the darn thing. Secondary staff's time is almost always less valuable than the providers. Only our providers can produce revenue producing encounters, right? Let me type the letters and let the MA write an Rx that the doc simply has to approve.

I'll add one of my suggestions again regarding medicaitons:

1. Need a place for Insurance - pts don't always know, especially part d folks. I try to stay within their formularly (thanks Epocrates!), since it saves me time later.
2. If we start to refill something and then don't - it still shows up in the refill date. In other words, being able to cancel a "refill".
3. I'd like to be able to tell if I did something or the MA did regarding refills. Right now, if I just look at when the last medication was refilled, there is no way to tell any circumstance, who did it, where was it sent if it's something odd, etc. We'd have to generate a message and/or encounter. Extra work when it's a fax frm the pharmacy.
4. An optional notation field.

There are more, but that's the most important.
Have a great day!

An optional notation field has been on my personal wish list for a long time : ) Also, I agree with a more detailed audit trail for prescriptions and refills.

scslmd,

Wow! I don't know how I missed your post. I think I understand your suggestion about not being able to include two medications with different dosages in the medication list. This is probably my number one pet peeve with the medicatin writer. I generally get so frustrated after four or five tries, that I ask the patient to try <G> This must be because the program only looks at the drug name and not the entire medication, i.e. with the strength. I have used two workarounds:

One is to add a hyphen after the second one. This sometimes works but we perfectionists our here don't tend to like that, lol.

The second which usually works after the second try, is to write the first medication such as Focalin XR 10 mg, then close the writer and go back in and write the Focalin XR 20 mg after.

I had my first experience with this just yesterday. I tried to write for a Chantix starter pack and then a regular Chantix script...wouldn't take both. Ended up having to send two different faxes to the pharmacy. This is not a huge problem but is a problem which one should, IMO, not have to worry about.

Leslie

Exactly...it's a real pain.

Here's what I do.

.Chantix Starter pack
Chantix 1mg BID

Note there is a "." before the starter pack. That is how I've learned to deal with writing two scripts with the same names.

I should not have to do this, but hey...it works.

Barbara

I absolutely agree. My wife and I use different electronic medical records. We both have noted how WE have become our own secretaries. We type our notes, we write our letters, we write our prescriptions... In fact, here I am working on clerical work when my secretary already left for the weekend!