Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Issues with AC and Phreesia Integration

Hey all:

Anyone else notice a problem with AC/Phreesia integration with names that have an ' in them? such as O'brian, etc...Phreesia is turning the names into O?????brian . . .

Yes, or (as I recall) a hyphen or a space.

The apostrophe, or single quote, is used by many databases to denote a string. For example, in the TRANSACT-SQL language to find all records with my last name you would do this:

SELECT [First], [Last], Birthdate FROM Patients WHERE [Last] = 'Summerlin'

Also, the double hyphen, --, is used to place a comment in code or is used for subtraction.

This is also true for other languages such as C# and Visual Basic.

I cannot speak for Phreesia as I have not used that product but I suspect you are seeing similar issues there.

Consider the following example:

SELECT * FROM Patients WHERE LastName LIKE '%O'Brian%'

I trust we see the problem there.

JamesNT

Dr. Mody / Mr. Morgan,

Thank-you for the feedback.

I have spoken with one of our technicians and it appears that the HL7 character that Amazing Charts uses for the apostrophe is different from Phreesia?s standard apostrophe character. I have escalated this to our engineering team, and your respective Account Managers will contact you as soon as this issue is resolved.

In the mean time, please feel free to call me directly on 646 502 8857 with any additional questions.

Thank-you for your continued support.

Andrew

We reported the same problem to Phreesia support and a correction was promised over 9 months ago. Hopefully the fix will get done soon.

Jimmie it is cool...Phreesia told me that they were working on a computer based log in over a year ago and would have it ready for beta testing last summer...still waiting

It would also be nice if Phreesia had a easier way for patients to check in by themselves without staff having to enter a password, select which patient and hand them the pad. I dont understand why a patient cant pick up the pad put in thier own name and/or DOB as a check in method without the PIN numbers. The PIN seems to really confuse the patients.

I have gone to many other offices that have personal check-in kiosks where I entered only my last name and date of birth to check-in without any staff assistance. However, if you attempt to use Phreesia in that manner and the patient types in the name "Ben Smith" and Amazing Charts has the patient's chart as "Benjamin Smith". Phreesia will automatically create a new chart for "Ben Smith" in Amazing charts (that cannot be deleted). This occurs even if the patient clicked on the "Established Patient" button before entering the name. The only way to prevent that from happening is to do as Gale states above and that is to have the staff member get a phreesia pad, click on office use, enter the office PIN, click enter, click the patient's name on the appt. list, then give the pad to the patient for them to START the check-in. That is alot of steps!

Andrew (of Phreesia), could you address why Phreesia does not consider a more simplifed option of PATIENT only check-in that eliminates this frustration for us AC users?

The issue (Geek speak): The HL7 character that Amazing Charts (AC) uses for an apostrophe is actually a left single quotation mark (U+2018 rather than U+0027). The result is that Phreesia does not recognize this character and generates a ? instead. Our technicians now have a new mapping tool, which should solve this issue. Dr. Mody , I believe you are working with JP (Phreesia Technician) to test this solution?

Jim: I apologize for the delay in getting this issue resolved ? since I read this thread I have been pushing hard for a resolution. Thank-you for your patience.

Dr. Mody: While a patient computer based log-in is still on Phreesia's radar, after extensive feedback from our customers the decision was taken to focus on our payment applications to help practices increase collections and accelerate cash flow - this has been hugely successful for our clients. We do not have a release date for the on-line log-in functionality.

Gale / Jim: The reason Phreesia has these steps in place is for patient authentication and ensuring patient privacy. As a patient I would not want to use a kiosk where anyone could enter my last name and DOB and have access to my PHI. Patients need to have their information protected. I don?t know if the other kiosks handle patient?s health and demographic information, or if they allow patients to review it to make changes and updates. If they did though and only authenticated using last name and DOB, I would not feel safe using those systems, especially at large clinics where there is very little staff supervision. That being said, I do understand your request for a simplified option. Phreesia did just release an update to streamline those steps to start the check-in process. Your practice can now set the start page on the PhreesiaPad to be the PIN page. We have also enhanced the loading of the patient roster once the pin is entered, so that it loads instantly. Please contact your Account Manager to learn more.

Jim, you also mentioned that Phreesia generates a duplicate patient in AC if a patient?s name is entered differently on the Phreesiapad (i.e. Ben Vs Benjamin). If a duplicate patient appears in Phreesia we allow you to merge these records on the Dashboard, but it sounds like Amazing Charts doesn?t have this functionality? We are more than happy to work with AC if they ever wanted to develop a ?merge patients? function, but the change would be required on their end.

I want to extend a sincere thanks to you all for your valuable feedback. I have passed all your comments on to our Product Development team, so we can continue to improve your Phreesia solution.

I can be reached on my direct line (646 502 8857) should you need any further clarification on the above.

Gratefully,

Andrew

Thank you Andrew for your response. It might be a partial solution to the problem if in AC you were able to merge the patients charts for duplicate charts. We have also looked at the http://patientpoint.com/ system that allows the patient to be identified and verified by name, DOB, address. This system you do not have to have a PIN number which seems to be the MAJOR problem with patients remembering the PIN number when they come in. Which in turn, goes back to the front office having to stop and reset the PIN number for the patient. We have merged the duplicate patients in phreesia but this still is a recurring duplicate problem when you hit Ctl F11 to bring the chart into AC. So for now, it is easier just to use phressia to check in New Patients and patients with a change in insurance. Even with new patients, there is alot of fields that are still not being filled in inside of AC (ex. cell phone numbers, work numbers, pharmacy, parents or guardian names,school names, how the patient found us etc.)This is also not always being filled in or changed on existing patients when there is a change made. Alot of the times the insurance is not changing in AC. You will have to wait on the print out or go into phressia where the insurance has been verified and manually change it in AC. Seems like there could be an easy solution to these problems. Especially the way phreesia identifies the patient without a PIN number that is always forgotten by the patient. Any further insight to making this easier would definately be appreciated. We completely understand trying to keep patients information safe, but i think there should be an easier way to do this!

I have an issue with Phreesia/AC that I would like you to help me with please Andrew. There are several "fields" that do not integrate between Phreesia and AC. For instance, only the home phone number will transfer over. The work and cell numbers do not transfer. Also, the main issue for us now is the pharmacy. If the patient changes the pharmacy in Phreesia this information is not being transfered over to AC. There are several "fields" that you manually have to enter on each patient every time they come in with a change. I have called phreesia about this and was told the code has not been writted to transfer over these. Do you know how long it will be before the code is written? This is something that would really speed up daily work flow for the front office and the doctor. Thanks for any help!

there is a huge issue for the "'" in the names. There is a fix. If you call phreesia support, they can help you solve the problem

Hi Gale,

Sorry for the delayed response. I don't have a specific time-frame as to when Phreesia and Amazing Charts will have the available resources to build-out our existing interface, but it is on our radar! Developing the integration will be a joint venture between Phreesia and Amazing Charts, so unfortunately it's not as straight-forward as Phreesia writing some code.

Please feel free to call me on my direct line (646 502 8857) with any additional questions.

Sincerely,

Andrew

Andrew:

Thanks for the responses. At least when we call phreesia about the integration in general we get an answer and a fix for these things...when we call AC for any issues with phreesia integration I always get them logging on and saying this is wrong and that is wrong...which it never is...and phreesia usually finds a quick and easy fix for it...usually something that stopped the integration client and what not...half the techs at AC dont' know how the integration works or how to fix it..it is unfortunate...the other half say oh that is phreeisa's issue..talk to them...even when it is something in the AC folder, phreesia techs know how to fix it.