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I am a brand new user and am still in demo mode and I need to decide before 12/1 whether to purchase AC. Questions: Patient check in ---is there anywhere in AC to note patients have been checked in? Past Medical History-- where do people keep the PMH?

Stevo. Internal Medicine. Oakland CA

Welcome to AC.
Stevo, in our office we simply enter the family past medical history in the PMHx window. I add to it during the patient visit when I have either made a new dx or when they see more for a hospital followup.

We don't use the scheduler in AC, rather a stand alone practice management system for billing and scheduling. To answer your question about patients being checked in, I don't know if AC will indicate they have been checked in per se.

However when I'm in my back office waiting for a patient, my staff either pages my back office phone to tell me such, or I refresh my AC inbox to see if new chart has been made. That's essentially how we use AC to determine that a patient is checked in, my staff pulls the chart, adds CC:, and vitals, then forwards to my in-box.

I go to the Past Medical History Box and enter:

NIDDM
HTN
etc.

Past Surgical History - Tonsillectomy, Cholecystectomy, etc.

Some offices just use the problem list as Past Medical but I think that makes a note too cluttered.

One thing I am going to try to force myself to do is to use the Health/Risk Factors with patients so things like diabetes, heart disease, tobacco, etc is codified as I think that will make it possible in the future to manipulate data - you can do the same with diagnosis codes and the new search functions, but I think using this will help particularly in the future.

I going to try to do the same w/ the Health/Risk Factors.

Under the past medical history box, I do similar to you but perhaps less neat:

HTN
DM II
Hyperlipidemia
s/p T&A
s/p Appe'y

Do you use separate line for each? I do with lots of Diagnoses but with few i try to make all visible in Three lines without scrolling.

Mine are listed one diagnosis per line. And I make some effort to list them in order of most important to least important, and I list the medical issue before the surgical histories.
So if they have 4 problems, they all show up. In some cases I have to scroll. If I go to the "past visits" screen, I can see the note as if it were completely printed and I will use this on occasion if the list is ridiculously too long to scroll forever.

This is exactly how I would list my diagnoses under the PMSHx box
i.e.:
ASCVD s/p MI 2008
asthma, mild persistent
HTN
s/p R knee arthroscopy

OR I might have more things as such:

Carotid a. disease s/p endoarterectomy 1999
seizure disorder
DM II
HTN
Hyperlipidemia
glaucoma
macular degeneration
s/p appe'y
s/p partial hysterectomy
s/p right L5 laminectomy

Hope this helps.

Thanks, all. This helps alot! I guess the system is so simple. I was probably looking for more complexity, which I really don't need. I was thinking the PMH was listed somewhere else as a list but is right there on the new defaulted note as soon as you open the chart. And you just build it right there in the progress note each visit. Wow, the simplicity is beautiful.
Thanks again.

Cool right? Jon did well calling this thing Amazing Charts!