Home Forums Discussions Problems Delete duplicate names

So I'm trying AC. Like the simplicity. Here's a problem I hope someone can help solve.

I entered the insurance info on a patient. When the next patient with the same insurance came up, AC didn't recognize the ins co. This happened on 4 other instances. Suddenly when I entered the 5th patient with the same insurance, AC tells me I have 5 instances of the company. Now it forces me to choose from a drop-down menu that has the exact same address I entered in 5 times. How can I remove the duplicate addresses?

That's bizarre; never happened to me. Was that ins co. not in the drop down menu after the first patient was entered? Maybe once it's in the system it cannot be entered manually again without error.

Exactly. The ins co was not in the drop down menu. That's why I had to re-enter it so many times. Now I'd like to know how to get rid of the duplicates.

Are you entering the data for the patients one after the other without exiting the demographics screen?

I have not done that, but have been entering one at a time, closing the window after each patient.

Don't know the answer to your question though. Good thing you're just in the try-out phase; then if the solution involves re-creating the patient data from scratch, no biggie.

I got lots of misspellings for different insurances which I would love to be able to get rid off. Examples: Aenta, Medicade, bsbc, madicare (Don't look at me, it's my staff. Some people just can't spell). If anyone figures it out please enlighten us.

You can do a search for "Aenta" for example and change all the patients listed under it. On restart, "Aenta" will no longer show as an automatic option. You then have to do this for all of the others.

The problem is they keep creeping back in, or there is the medicade, pubic aide, medical card, IDPA and variations on a theme all for the same insurance. I gave up.

We solved this by passing an office "law" that only the person doing the billing had the authority to enter a new insurance. The rest of us all have to use the drop down menus. All the various permutations of blue cross get called "bc/bs" which (as a non-medical person) always makes me smile because I see because bull-sh..

The only way to delete the duplicate names and address is to do a search with all the patients who have the insurance company. You must go to each one and change it to the correct one on your drop down. Only when you get to the original entry and everyone is fixed will it go away.

This is also the method you use when there is a misspelling in a patients city. Its very cumbersome and takes time. Its the fix we were told about during the first AC conference.

That is correct in the search area for insurance you need to do a search for the misspelled insurance name so it pulls a list of all those patients that have it misspelled in the demographics area, and correct that name on each patients chart. If you have done this, and you know that it is correct on each patients chart that came up in the search you can also try the free text search that is in the search area, and just use the search to search in demographics, uncheck the other options there, and type in the misspelled insurance name there, and search again. This will produce a list for you as well, and you need to do the same as above by going to each patients chart, and correcting the misspelled insurance name.

We gave up on AC for billing anyways so it does not matter anymore. It is just one of those things that irks me every time I see it; like when you have an old patient whose insurance prints in orders with the wrong insurance name. Makes you look unprofessional.

Nothing is misspelled.

It's the same ins co. It's name appears once. Then the drop down for the address shows that we have 5 instances. The exact same address 5 times.

How do I get rid of the duplicates?

No differences in upper/lower case? no trailing spaces?

Wow, that makes it difficult. What would work, but be very time consuming, would be to use the search function to look up every patient with that insurance. Then go to each patient's demographics section and select the top entry for that insurance (so that you ensure none of the other options are being used). Once done exit Amazing Charts on all the office computers and the main computer (server) and see if they are still there. This should fix it but as a trial I would do it on an insurance company that you have few patients with. If needed you could "create" the same problem for that insurance if it only has one instance in the drop down list.

Well,

Thankfully this is a trial of AC. I had to reload all the patient demographics, and re-enter the insurance info. Since I had only entered about 7-8 ins companies, it ONLY took a few hours to do all this.

Fun, Fun.