Home Forums Discussions Problems Imported items bogging down my system

Would it make any difference if I stacked all the old items in the same category (for instance, home health items) into a single imported item would it speed up access?

Kathleen

I am not sure of the question.....
When we first started using AC we would scan in the old paper chart using the same "headers" that were used a sections in the paper chart. ( Clinic notes and messages, summary of care,lab test results, medication refill logs, injection records and consults from other phycisians all in chronologic order)However, after using the system for nearly 2 years I wish that the imported items had been subdivided into MORE subcategories not fewer. It would have been especially helpful ( particularly in the larger charts) to subdivide the test results into smaller subsections ( mammograms,bone density, colonoscopy, PAP, microbiology, chemistry, CBC or whatever) so that in the future it is not necessary to wade through 27 pages under the single header of "lab tests" to find the last TSH. Whoever is doing the scanning can also scan the same document into 2 categories if you like so that it is easy to search (the downside to this idea is that these are all imported as a PDF file and take up relatively large amounts of space and are time consuming to back up). Also the date on the item can be changed to reflect the date of the original file rther than the date the itme was imported into AC.
When you go to an imported item section there is a "toolbar" on the left of the page at the top of which is an icon that looks like one page on top of the other. If you click on this it will show you a banner ribbon of the pages that are faster to scroll through than using the down arrow on the right hand to drag sequentially through the pages. I am embarrassed to admit how long it took me to realize that was there and how helpful it is.

Huh? I am not aware of this feature and I am not seeing it when I follow your instructions. can you explain it again?

Kathleen,
Could you be more specific about your question; are you talking about "speeding up":
Starting AC (from its icon)
Logging on (after you see the AC box with sign-in information)
or Opening an individual patient's chart?

I doubt that what you are suggesting would make a difference either way, but it would help to understand the question before trying to answer it.

Leslie,
I think Deborah is referring to the "thumbnail" feature of Adobe reader. In the imported items area, when you open a document, the right side of the screen is essentially the Adobe reader application. On the left side of that application are 4 icons. The top one is two sheets of paper stacked on top of each other. If you click on that, it will show you a thumbnail of each page of the document. Deborah is suggesting that if you have a multi-page document, you can scroll through it more effectively by going through the thumbnails rather than the actual pages of the document itself in the reader.

Oh ok, got it! I thought there was a feature in AC like that.

Thank you Jon....that is what I was trying to describe.

i think i am having the same problem. is it when you try to open the imported items section of a patient that has many imported items? On my doctors' new computers (windows 7) it either takes several minutes to load or they get knocked off entirely. I have had my computer guy look them over and he feels it is an AC issue, but the help desk was not able to find the problem. When using the other computers it is a tiny bit slow...but nothing compared to this! Can anyone help with this?

I have more problems on my W7 machines as well. Much faster to open on the XPs

bfisher,
since it is just one computer, first thing I would try would be to turn off the antivirus program on that computer and see if that is the problem. It might be deep scanning all those files before allowing you to look at them. This happened to me several years ago and I changed settings on my antivirus program (and later changed programs), and this fixed the problem.

If this doesn't help I would close amazing charts and try to open the imported items through Windows explorer and bypass A/C and see if you still have the delay. (and if you still have a delay then A/C is not the problem)
...Ken

Also, try opening the chart with the shortcut to imported items, F9. I don't exactly know why, but this gets you into a chart (even the imported items) much more quickly than by opening the chart and clicking on the imported items tab.

In Imported Items right click menu includes "Reconcile to order". Exactly what does that do?

BTW same menu the "Open in default application" choice instantly opens the PDF lab file etc full screen, easier reading, rather than
a small document in the right pane.

Bob

thank you for responding! i will try the F9 trick when i get in tomorrow morning! hope it works hope it works hope it works!! the AC tech dept did fiddle around with disableing the antivirus,but now that you mention it, the very first time i called on this issue,that person said something about getting a different antivirus...the new computers have something called "Avast." I appreciate your responses so much!