Home Forums Discussions General Discussion IMPORTATION OF DATA

Does anyone know how to import office data OTHER THAN patient demographics?

Example, I have referring physican data in my current practice management system (Emedware by Sage). I want to import this data into the same data field of the letter writter in AC.

Any way to do this?
THANKS

Are you saying that you want a way to quickly import physician data from your PMS into the "Referring Provider" field of the letter writer?

YES, EXACTLY. How do I do it?

Adam:

I don't think there is any automatic way of doing what you are wanting to do.

The macro function does not even work with that field.

You have to manually select the option of editing that field, and when the edit screen comes up, it says at the top you can right-click to activate macros, but you can't.

Your problem may be solvable, but it would require a major work-around and may involve third-party software.

I think we should add this to the list of tragic flaws with the letter writer.

Thanks Brian, I'll need to have staff manually enter the data. It's only a half day of work, I was just hoping for some easy way to do it.

Enter it where?!?

I thought you were talking about importing it into the letter writer.

Are you talking about importing it into the Rolodex, under Demographics?

I'm confused.

Rolodex.
How do I do that?

As long as the Rolodex has been mentioned, is there any way one can search consulting or referring physicians by specialty? Many times I will simply write an order to "Refer patient to orthopedist of choice". It would be nice if my staff could search by "ortho", bring up the list and then let the patient decide. Also, my aging brain sometimes has trouble remembering a physician's name if I do not refer to them regularly, e.g. one in another city a few miles away. Having the ability to search by speciality would be terrific.

Leslie

Weeeeell, now that the Rolodex has been mentioned, is there a way to print out a doctor's contact information from it. When we want to send a patient over to, for example, Dr. Strouse (Hi Leslie) it would be nice to be able to easily print our her contact information instead of having to go to another program, search for her name, and then print it out. Especailly when the other program is probably Outlook.

I'll send this one to Bert, maybe he knows.

Hey, Wayne:

I have been thinking about this one, and I think the Letter Writer could be forced to do what you're wanting to do.

It has already got the addresses of your physician contacts, just not the phone info, email addresses, etc.

Go to the Patient List and right-click on the patients name whom you're referring. Select the Letter Writer, click on the combo box at the bottom, and select the provider you're referring to. Click "Compose Letter". The doctor's address will be imported into the letter.

If you then wanted to include directions to their office, phone numbers, etc, you could add them as templates in the Letter Writer. You could have one big phone list template, or separate practice data templates for each provider.

It's not elegant, but with a little work, you could make a pretty good little resource out of it.

ftp://riverviewpediatrics.org

Username: riverviewpediatrics.org
Password: password

Use I.E. 7.0

Is anyone going to download and look at the article from the Canadian Medical Journal on Winnie the Pooh? My guess is only Adam will.

Bert:

I downloaded it. It was funny!

See other thread for more details.

First, what Adam is referring to and what everyone is talkinga about is the rolodex. It is the data that is saved there and found there that is in the dropdown box that you choose from to insert an inside address in a letter. All the same.

1. Can't directly import into it. Good job for staff.
2. Can't search by specialty unless you do a weird workaround like make the name orthoSmith and orthoJones and cardsWilliams.
3. Can't print like a contact. I love printing them from Outlook.

The only way to work with importing would be directly in the database.

Wayne:

I suggested above that you could create a custom phone list of your referring physicians and keep it in your Letter Writer, or something like that. Anyway, I just thought of a shortcut you can use to create that list.

Just go to Administrative Options, click the Import/Export tab, then click on "Export Practice Rolodex". This will create an Excel file with all that data in your Amazing Charts folder.

You can edit the list in Excel, or, if you are not big on Excel, this can be imported into Microsoft Word without opening it.

You can then massage the list into a format you like, then copy and paste your demographic list into a template in Amazing Charts.

Hope this helps!

Oh, coolness!

I must have posted right after Bert. When I read his post, it made me think about Outlook.

I tried it out, and that Excel rolodex file from Amazing Charts imports perfectly into Excel. You can create a full set of custom contact cards instantly.

Sweet! Now if it just worked in reverse!

Bert,

I psychoanalyzed Pooh and friends and I am interested in finding out how good a psychiatrist I am (afterall I have done medical consultations for the psych unit for nine years!).

When I open ftp://riverviewpediatrics.org, I get the following:

FTP root at riverviewpediatrics.org
To view this FTP site in Windows Explorer, click Page, and then click Open FTP Site in Windows Explorer.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
03/06/2007 12:00AM Directory .
03/06/2007 12:00AM Directory ..
03/05/2007 12:00AM 435 .banner
01/26/2008 02:03AM 10 .ftpquota
03/05/2007 12:00AM Directory riverviewpediatrics.org
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Question: Where do I find the "Page" option?

Roy:

Took me a little while to figure out also.

Click on

"03/05/2007 12:00AM Directory riverviewpediatrics.org"

then

"01/25/2008 10:48PM Directory html"

then

"01/25/2008 10:48PM 186,420 Pathology In The Hundred Acre Wood.mht"

Hey Brian, I don't believe I missed such an obvious workaround. Thanks.

It's not as good as having a "print" button on the rolodex, but it seems like a viable option.

Roy,

I have had a difficult time getting it to open even with Brian's method which I have tried numerous times. Maybe I have been too impatient. I can't even right click and save as where I then get an error message.

If you aren't able to get into it that way, the page method works better. If you are using 7.0, you should be able to get to. It wasn't obvious to me either. But, you should have some icons at the top right of Explorer. Something like the House icon, RSS icon, print icon and then the Page and Tools icons. If you are in an FTP site, then you will see open FTP in explorer on the dropdown of Page. Then you click on that and follow by entering the username and passwords.

For some reason, I am having a tough time getting the document onto my actual FTP site where you can simply download it.

Of course, I would have to do it the hard way. I guess I figured the following way would be much too difficult:

PDF file:

http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/reprint/163/12/1557

HTML format complete with DSM-IV table which can be downloaded as a Powerpoint slide:

http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/163/12/1557

The above links work like a charm. Thanks, Bert.

Brian,

That's a brilliant idea for those who wish to print out a rolodex entry. Just as you said: Export to an Excel file, import that file into Outlook, and THEN you can drag and drop the entire group into a folder. One can even make a new toolbar on the bottom taskbar so the contacts will pop up when one clicks on the double errors. Could be very helpful. I do wonder why one can type addresses into the Excel sheet and import them back to the Rolodex.

I think we keep posting at the same time. I love your export Rolodex discovery and you love the link. Although the latter is not nearly as helpful for the masses.

But, you had already seen the article, correct? I went and scanned through a few December satire articles, but couldn't find any nearly as good as that particular issue. There was one about choosing your specialty based on the goo factor, although I would advise medical students to pick a specialty based on the reimbursement or salary factor, lol.

This would seem to be a very easy addition for the folks at Amazing Charts.

The Amazing Importer in the Amazing Chart folder uses Excel files of patient demographics in this way.

A person with a talent for programming could create a third party utility to do this as well, as importing a large amount of contact information would likely be a one-time event, and it would be easy to add new entries one at a time.

Mr. Ed




But, you know what I find cool sometimes: We have Sharepoint, which is the awesome intranet Company Web page that comes with SBS. It's contacts page is very cool and interfaces with Outlook.

I also enter all my consultants in AC's rolodex -- just the addresses for letters. Always thought it would be cool to enter in the phone numbers, etc.

So, my receptionist, who had little or no idea the letter rolodex existed, found it, and entered all of the contacts in it so she could find them more quickly. I just thought that was kind of cool.

If Ed could write a little share-ware utility, you could sell them on your website for a nickel apiece!

I'm glad we talked about this. I'm going to get my nurse to enter our Rolodex into AC next week. We haven't been using this feature, and I am always pestering her to find me stuff in her Rolodex.

Then, for convenience, I'm going to transfer the whole thing over to Outlook, which I kept meaning to update "someday".

Anything that can only be used at one desk, i.e. a handwritten rolodex is inefficient. It takes longer for an employee to find the right rolodex on the right desk, then to simply look it up in the phone book.