Home Forums Discussions Problems Scheduler's Comment as Chief Complaint.

This issue has been bugging me for some time. The scheduler's comment becomes the chief complaint of a particular visit. Many a times my scheduler will type in a comment eg. reason for the patient's visit. Which, I agree is important, but at times not truly relevant. In a rush, many a times, I have saved notes with my scheduler's gems as the chief complaint. The last stroke of genius that was saved was an extremely embarrassing reason for the visit which I have no way of rectifying.
There ought to be a way to turn this feature off. I would like that field blank or the chief complaint of the last visit.

Zak,

That whole area needs to be looked at. I am thinking of going to AC for our scheduler (we use Medware's now). But, that would probably be the kicker.

But, the other issue we discussed a few months back was the fact that the chief complaint becomes the title of the visit history. Which makes your situation even worse. So, the chief complaint by my MA of Fever and cough for five days is what is saved to the visit history when he should be "Bronchitis" or "Pneumonia."

My nurse fills in the CC field, and I pretty much keep the entries she uses, which are crude, but effective:

"FEVER. COUGH. NASAL DRAINAGE."

Classically, of course, the chief complaint is what the patient tells you is wrong with them, in their own words. Following that method in AC would get you a visit history with titles like "I can't pee." or "I'm out of pain pills," which I'm not crazy about (though it has its charms).

I wish we had the option of choosing the first line of the Assessment field as the title of the visit history, or -- even better -- have both the chief complaint and the Assessment side-by-side, which would give you titles like:

"Fever & cough x 5 days/PNEUMONIA 480.8"
"Yearly exam/ROUTINE PAP SMEAR V76.2"
"Wants to talk to doc privately/ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION 302.72"

Which you can see adds a lot more specificity to the description.

(BTW, I am very happy with AC's scheduler so far)

Thank you for your inputs. I too have absolutely no issues with the scheduling part of the program. Using another program would be rather redundant. Wonder why Bert being a veteran user prefers another program to schedule?

It is probably part of what ever Practice Managment program he is using to run the money and insurance side of his practice. I gather he probably either really likes it or is just more comfortable with it. This is very common....

Zak,

LOL. Good question. When I first started using AC in 8/2003, we were entrenched with scheduling with Medisoft. I must admit Medisoft's scheduler was pretty good, and I spent many hours tinkering with it to use its full capacity of printing extremely detailed superbills based on appointment data.

When I set up here, my practice manager and biller/coder would rather have Medware than a new Lexus or Mercedes. So, I was stuck with that. But, Medware, as with a lot of billing programs, seems to have made its scheduler as an afterthought. You can't color code as with Medisoft, and more importantly, everything you put in the scheduler (lunch, vaccines, no shows, etc.) are counted as appointments. So, you glance at a day and get excited because there are 24 appointments at the beginning of the day, only to find that 7 are vaccines and 1 is lunch.

So, I am definitely thinking of going with AC's scheduler and, as you can imagine, am already playing with it. If there are any Medware people out there who have done both, I would love to get their insight.

Thanks Zak.

You could just have your assistant who rooms and vitals the patient erase out the CC for you before you get the chart. Our MA's put in the CC if the one there looks stupid. So it's changed before I ever get the chart.

I have come really close to deciding to put the Diagnosis in the CC line at the end of the visit. This would insure that the visit history says:

Bronchitis
Otitis
Eczema
Otitis

etc. rather than a list of Chief Complaints, which as Brian points out, could look and does look rather silly. But, this would mean that the final note would have the diagnosis for the chief complaint and the charting would take longer, not to mention that I would forget a good deal of the time.

Oh the workarounds in AC