Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Medicine - name only, no tab/cap sig etc

Hi, I'm new to AC and I'm an ENT. I will frequently see patients who are on ten meds with their pcp, and I don't want to have to enter each one in any detail other than the name of the med (or have my staff do so). Is there any way to do this other than to enter it in so it's in italics, and therefore bypasses any cross checking of the med interactions and allergies, which I would like to retain?

Just enter the meds in the Current medications screen. The interactions checking happens in the prescription writer.

That doesn't work for what I need.

Let's say a patient is on coumadin.
If I try to enter this in the Current med section, I will have a choice of 10 or so different strength tablets, and one IV formulation all scrollable on a 5 line window.

If I were the patient's pcp, or if I was going to operate on this patient, I would need to know exactly what dose, route, frequentcy etc of this medicine. As an ENT, seeing him for an ear issue, say, just knowing he's on coumadin is more than enough for me, and for the most part, I think, adequate for any interaction and allergy checking that would need to be done.

If the patient doesn't know or have a list that specifies this, I'm left with the choice of guessing/just putting in a garbage/unknown dose for the med, which I would much rather not do.

If I go ahead and select a dose, and then go up to the entry box, and get rid of the dose part, the computer changes it to italics, which, as I understand, is just a meaningless text string, which cannot be check for interactions or allergies.

So is there any way around this, or is Amazing Charts for pcp's only?

I think the pcp only issue has some issues. Unfortunately like it or not all medical records are part of the overall record. I forward an office note with a full h&p to all specialists and I am frustrated by an incomplete record on their chart - sometimes if the specialist sends to another specialist and leaves off my info, which sends an incomplete record to the next specialist. We need to get pt to bring in lists, call pharmacies or pcp to get list. I know this is a pain and specialists complain to me they do not have time -- but I do this all the time for patients who see multiple specialists and see 20-30 pt per day and look at. 100 faxes so I know it is a pain.

I suppose this would be a pcp only emr if this issue of needing to enter medications justifies paying thousands more dollars for an emr that lets you enter drugs without doses.
We have signs all over our office stating that patients need to bring in scripts at time of appt. They know they need this info. We really all need to know this information. It is a safety issue. Definitely time consuming and a pain in the butt but it is part of a history and physical and I would hope that all physicians are formulating their diagnoses and treatments plans after at least a basic history and physical. Even if you are just retyping mine. I send a complete history and physical with every referral I make to a any specialist.

I guess I don't understand why you can't go to the current meds window, select Coumadin 2 mg, click save and be done. While you may not need the strength, it comes with the medication, and you are done in no time. I would think it would be helpful to at least know that it comes in a 2 mg tablet.

You don't need the dose, route, frequency, #tablets or refills.

Hey, thanks for the tips.

What I was really hoping was that there might be a way to have some sort of utility program run through the medication database, pull out all of the medicines with the same name, but offered in various dosages, and reinsert a line in the database that had only the medication name without an associated dose. Maybe put in the space character or the question mark character, or even 0 mg, if the database is designed with a separate field for dosage that mustn't be empty.

I know nothing about database programming, but it doesn't necessarily seem that a utility like this would be too difficult to program.

Thanks again, I guess I maybe need to take it to the "wish list" section.

AC hears this everyday.