Home Forums Discussions Problems Problems with Updox

Attaching patients to printed items: We've already had one significant user error with Updox. An employee meant to send a patient his labs, but unfortunately sent someone else's medication refills. I've also made the same error. The problem is, after you print the labs, you have to re-attach the patient name. There should be a button in AC to "Print to Updox", and it should keep the patient attached. Otherwise it's just a matter of time before this mistake happens again. It seems like it would be pretty simple to set this up, since they are already connected. Is this being worked on?

Attaching patients to incoming items: Obviously this still has to be manually done, for example incoming faxes. It would be great if there was a two step verification process to do this/double check to make sure you are attaching the correct patient to the item.

Incoming messages: And ideally incoming patient messages would go directly into AC and not UPDOX. This is probably a longer term issue to address.

Thanks for any input and PLEASE consider adding the "Print to Updox" button in AC to keep the patient attached to the item.

David Lee, MD
IM
Dallas, TX

Yes, after a similar error early on I have also become terribly paranoid about sending the wrong information to a patient. Now, after I send to UpDox and select the patient, I mouse over the attachment and triple check that it is for the correct patient. My worst times are when, after a morning in the procedure room, I have imported a number of notes on very similar procedures on different patients from a memory stick to imported items and am sending them to the portal along with comments. It is about a 20 mouse click process, and every one can cause a disaster.

Adding a "print to updox" will only get the info to the printer. We need to easily export the info to the portal. That would be ideal. Less clicks and no accident possible.

David,
I really don't use the portal, and maybe you already know this, but...
Updox allows you to "drag and drop" documents. I am not sure if it supported this for a long time and I just noticed it recently, or if it is a relatively new feature.
So the process for your reports might be to open the drive, select all of the procedure notes, drop into Updox.
Then "send" each report "to patient". Click "Send to EMR" and "Send to portal". The results are in the chart and on the way to the patient. (You only have to pull up the patient once).
Maybe this is what you are already doing, but it seems to me that it is a pretty efficient way to take reports from another source to both the patient and their chart simultaneously.
Of course, a staffer could conceivably do some of this.

My biggest concern for now is sending lab results to patients. Yes, a "Send to Patient Portal" button from their AC chart would be ideal, one in which you don't have to re-associate the patient with what you are sending. Our labs get directly imported from Labcorp, so if you send labs on the wrong patient, you are at least sending the wrong patient his/her labs, and not someone else's. It seems like this would be a simple but very useful thing to add. Maybe someone from Updox could comment?

David Lee, MD
IM
Dallas, TX

Jon,

THANK YOU!!!! That just saved me a LOT of work. Also, I can now send things through UpDox in color, making it even better.

Jon,

What are you referring to in Updox regarding the "drag & drop" feature you hadn't noticed?

Marty,
I put this in a new thread, which is here.

Hi Dr Lee (and others), we're not opposed at all this this idea, we'd love to have a button in AC that sends something right to the patient portal. It's definitely possible, we've already done it with other EMR systems. However, that does require some work on Amazing Charts' side so they would need to have the time (and interest) to work on that.

Unfortunately, there's not much we can do in the meantime without their support. The print jobs we get from them (or any other program) is just a bunch of data for how the print job looks, there really isn't any anywhere to pass along extra data about who the patient is, etc. We can take a look at the titles they are assigning to their documents before they get printed, we may be able to pull some info out of the title, but that's gonna be hit or miss (for example, the title when you print a page of demographics might have enough info but printing an imported item may not).

Thanks Tobin. I'll post this on the Wish List forum.

David Lee, MD
IM
Dallas, TX

Maybe someone should use the "Suggested improvement" button on AC and send it in there.

RE: scanning resolution into updox.

Recently updox came out with a new smaller file size for black and white items. Unfortunately readability suffered. I see that they have released a new option called "smart black and white" that is significantly more readable. This is in version 3.88 of updox.

For example, I scanned a superbill and here were the file sizes with different resolutions:
Black and White: 86K
Smart Black and White: 140K
Greyscale: 919K

To change resolution goto "My profile" under the tools menu in updox, then choose "settings". This is done on a per user basis.

Thanks Ken. I was still using the "dumb" black & white.

By the way, if anyone from Updox is reading this, I miss the days when the changes in Updox were written up in the "What's new" section.

Yes, Ken, thank you...on my "to do" list was to contact Updox because some of our imports were looking fuzzy. You showed me why, and I fixed the problem by changing the resolution.

John, this was described in the V3.85 "what's new". For awhile that section was pretty quiet, but since the first of the year the improvements are coming rapidly.

Ken,

Thanks. I was also wondering why it used to import clear then got fuzzy if I tried to print something. When did this update come out?

I tried to check the "What's New" section in Updox this morning, but it seems to be off line.

Ah, seems to be back on line now. Yes ,they have caught up on the posted new changes.

Yes, I've been trying to keep the "What's new" up-to-date again, it's good to know people are using it.

Marty, the new printer settings (where we initially released the B&W option) were released on Jan 25 (http://myupdox.com/new/whats_new_2012.html). Since then, we've been tweaking the algorithms based on customer feedback and we added the "Smart B&W" I think in this last release. As you can tell, I missed it in the what's new.