Home Forums Discussions Problems Search functions

We have a multiple provider practice and empanel patients to care teams. Trying to figure the best way to link patients with providers. I see that there is an option to choose the preferred provider in the demographics section; but can't find a way to list all patients in a provider's panel.

The search function allows to search by chart number and I'm wondering if it might be best to use that to tag providers with patients so we can produce a list when needed.

Anyone using the search function in creative ways who can share some ideas.

Also, can we develop our own SQL queries that accesses the AC database?

Thanks,

Tim

Doubtful about the SQL queries. Here are some more workarounds IF I understand what you are trying to do. I am assuming you use the schedule or it would be rather easy to do it that way.

But, glancing at the search functions, it seems you could use either Phone, Medications or Diagnosis.

For instance, if you didn't use the work phone field (which admittedly may be tough to give up -- but you could put it elsewhere in a miscellation field, you could put a phone number for each team such as 222-2222 in the demographics of a patient belonging to that team. A search on 222-2222 would yield all of the patients.

You could use the name of the team or doctor for a medication. Sure, you would have a weird medicine name in the list, but a quick search on that "medication" would yield all the names.

Finally, you could make up a new ICD-9 code with the team name and just search on that diagnosis.

You can also search on provider seen. But that would be after the fact.

Thanks for the ideas. I kinda like the ICDM code one. Seems less intrusive than using other areas of the chart for this purpose.

As a group we should come up with document titled "Amazing workarounds"

I definitely would have to head that list.

Version 4 has an area in the demographics over where directives are labelled miscellaneous. They are numbered 1-5 with the first set up to be an extra chart number (for hospital numbers or chart numbering you already have set up). The other 4 could be used for anything - I put a name under Miscellaneous 2 and then used the search free text, chose demographics and hit search. That would allow you to assign them to a team or name - search and print a list of all of them. I think Jon has every intention of really beefing up the search functions and this may improve even more (letting you exclude inactive patients, search for inactive vs active meds, etc) - hopefully some of this will be incorporated in Version 5 (due soon).

Much better idea. Nice and clean. Although one caveat. You should think ahead before coming up with a word. For instance, if you came up with Team green and Team blue, etc., then entering "blue" which I did after putting blue in #2, returned that patient but also every patient in the practice with Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Blue Card, etc.

So, I tried it again (why I try these things I don't know) with dinosaur321 (I don't know of any insurance or street name with that) and only that person came back.

But if you chose to use 'team blue' and searched for exact match 'team blue' then it would work. The only thing that would be great is if you could name Miscellaneous Field 1 as Chart ID, Field 2 as Team assigned, etc. - maybe if we all put that in suggested improvements we could get Jon to do that.

Yes, I agree. And, I produced a good workaround and you made it even better. Isn't there a commercial like that?

Steven, "I don't make the Bert workaround. I make the Bert workaround better." LOL.

I thought of that option today and tried it; but then thought of the restrictions, namely that while you could print a list, you still cannot do a combined search. We really want to be able to print out all diabetics (or other criteria) for a speicfic provider team. We can develop Amazing workarounds like exporting searches to Excel, combining and then sorting. Quite a pain (though not som much compared to our old paper method).

Bert, how would you use ICD codes as tags since one cannot search by ICD?

Btw, are the search functions more robust with V4 as some have said. We have yet to upgrade; our IT guy is planing for early July.

T

Oops! I now realize that you can search by preferred provider in the demographics section using free text search. Of course, you still can't search on combined criteria using free text.

I must be getting ICD-9 code and diagnosis confused???

I would think if you put "TeamGreen" in as a diagnosis code and gave it ICD-9 of whatever, then you could search for TeamGreen in the diagnosis section.

Ah, I see what you mean. Since I have not messed around with adding any new diagnosis codes I wasn't seeing that option. So, I can edit the diagnosis code .db for this purpose.

I'll give it a try.

Thanks

Well, I have been sitting here for 26 hours waiting on your reply, lol. Let me know how it turns out.