Home Forums Looking for best way to manage old and new immz records

Hello folks. I have thousands of older charts with immz records on paper and I am struggling with how to integrate them into AC. In my practice, we need easy and near instantaneous access to an upto date shot record for our patients-- it is critical for patient flow and efficiency. I know I could just scan them in, but here is the rub: when that child comes in for a new shot, the old scanned in record is now out of date. Of course I am entering all shots since AC adoption into AC and I can see them under the summary tab but what about the thousands of shots given before AC was implemented? Inputting all those shots and dates for all patients into AC is an impossibly herculean task.
I need a scan+pdf or scan + ocr package into which all the paper immz records can be scanned in and then the scanned record can be updated by typing into it when a new shot is given.
Any ideas?

I'm personally waiting for the immunization registry link to start working for New Jersey. My hope is that it will be bidirectional, so that not only are our shots uploaded to the state, but the state's immunization registries update our own AC records. That would be the best of both worlds.


Shankar Santhanam
Family Medicine
Lawrenceville, NJ

Dear AJ:

We faced the same problem, but of a lesser magnitude as a family doc. It's taken a while but my medical assistant has entered the immunizations into AC for all our active pediatric patients. For older children and adults we have just scanned their vaccination records. I know of no easy shortcut--but "the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." If you plug away at it you'll get it done. The same is true with the transition from paper to AC in general terms. We took our time and it took us two years till we finally got all the charts up in the attic and the chart rack out of the office. To have done it much quicker would have led to a mutiny by my wonderful office staff.

John

We are doing this as patients come in for routine visits. Slow process.

So I just started with AC 2wks ago. I watched a video on Health Maintenance and Immunizations and it shows to click the "Injection given elsewhere" box but it wouldn't allow me to save. I get a box saying "Please enter the location and approximate date the injection was given." I have already selected the date. Where do I need to enter the location? The cursor goes to the comment box. I tried entering there and then it kicked me out to the first tab.

OK, I see from looking at the HM due tab that it accepted the immunizations I entered but is there a place to see all those that have been entered. An immunization record to print? I apologize if these questions are too basic for the user board. I have been using Chat and phone calls to AC almost every day and they suggested the user board to help figure AC out.

Summary Sheet tab --> Decision support and injections (at bottom left)

Complete tab (Will show all immunizations.

Clicking on any date will bring up that immunization in an edit box.

We have suggested to AC multiple times to switch Complete with Due as one will use the Complete window WAAAY more than the Due, and it would be nice to glance down and see the vaccines without clicking on a tab.

There is no bad question.

a. j., I echo those on here. We had one person go through EVERY record and enter vaccine records. Then, any new patient, we entered the record as soon as we got the records.

By far the number one record requested is the immunization record.

I found a pretty decent solution to my own question, so I thought I would post it here (and its free!).
We simply scanned in ea paper immz record we have into the 'main' computer as a pdf and shared it across the network. The scans initially go in with a default name like 03052013934098 and have to be changed to the patient's name. Once this is done, I would highly recommend indexing that folder because you can then just type the patient's name in the search box that opens when you click on the start button (win7) and you will find the immz record in a flash.

With the free Adobe XI, you can also edit ea of these records to keep them updated as you give new shots.

Sounds a lot like F.A.P.