Home Forums Discussions Problems New Rx's populating Current meds field

I almost never can finish a note while the patient is still present. I thought I'd do really well by prescribing under the Plan Rx's and fax them off to the pharmacy....as later might be the end of the day. I then forwarded the note to my box. When I went to finish later, I noticed that the Plan new Rx's had populated the "current meds" section making it look like they were already on the new med. I would have thought that this wouldn't happen until I signed the note, not just forwarded it for later completion. Hopefully, someone can advise on this.

Peggy:

I understand you to say that medications you prescribed earlier on the date of service are somehow appearing under "Current Medications" in the clinic note for that date of service.

I very often forward notes to myself for completion, and I have never had it do what you are describing.

On the other hand, double-clicking on the "Current Medications" field when you are typing your note will cause what you are describing to happen. The Prescription Writer will open. When you close it, all the meds in the "Patient Med List" will be transported to the "Current Medications" field of your clinic note. Could that have happened accidentally somehow?

Peggy,

When you write your scripts, are you opening the medication field or are you using the Rx button that is to the right of the plan field? I find when I just open up the medicaitons and do not click on the RX button, it will do this.

Hope this makes sense.

What Peggy describes has been happening for me since day 1 (7 months now). Prescriptions written pressing the RX button show up in the current meds list as well as on my plan. I pretty much figured that was just one of the quirks of the program. I run Vista on a Lenovo Thinkpad with handwriting recognition if that makes any difference.

Wow, Dan, that's weird. That has never happened to me.

Tell me, do you (or others with this problem) complete your notes at one sitting, or do you forward them to yourself, or save them as a draft somehow? I am wondering if that could have something to do with it.

I'm a new user, completing my second week of "Gone Live" with AC.
With RARE exception, I am completing notes before I walk out of the room.

I am not experiencing the same problem as the originator of the post.

Most notes are completed before leaving the room. However since BCMD asked, I paid closer attention today and purposely forwarded a couple charts to myself before doing the prescription and it DOES seem to be on these forwarded charts that the phenomenon occurs - not on charts completed wholly at the first sitting. As I said earlier...just one of the quirks.

Thanks for all your comments....I have been paying careful attention to what I am doing and it seems that if i complete a note from beginning to end, with writing the RX(sending via fax)(I always use the RX button for new meds) and signing the note and do it in the "order presented", no problems and everything goes as planned. However, even if I complete a note in the exam room (not forward it) and get to the end and send the RX (via button)and then sometimes I review the note and notice I forgot to list a "current medication"....this is when the problem occures. As I go to list the current medication, the new RX also populates this section and shows up in the note as a current med. The problem is going back to the "current med" after having completed the new RX. It doesn't matter whether the note was forwarded or not. I'm trying to be more careful....this does give an inaccurate picture of the patient's profile when the new stuff is shown in the current list. Is there a "work around"?

Peggy:

When you double-click in the "Current Medication" field of the progress note, the Prescription Writer opens. Any medications you add at that time will show up under "Current Medications", but will not show up in the "Plan" portion of the progress note.

HOWEVER -

When you return to the program, every medication that was contained in the "Active Medication" field of the Prescription Writer will now be listed under "Current Medications".

This is not a bug. This is how you are supposed to update the "Current Medication" list in Amazing Charts.

No newly-prescribed medication should ever appear in the "Current Medication" field UNLESS you double-click on that field.

The program's doing what it's supposed to do. There are a couple of ways to deal with this.

EXAMPLE: If you prescribe Bactrim for a patient, and then you realize that you forgot to add Lipitor as a chronic medication, you only have a couple of options:

1. Double-click on "Current Medications", add Lipitor, close the Prescription Writer, and manually delete Bactrim from the "Current Medication" list.

Or, if you are very forward-looking and efficient, you could:

2. Double-click on "Current Medications", add Lipitor, set Bactrim as "Inactive" (reason: patient completed), and close the Prescription Writer.

Option "2" is the better solution, because it will not only keep Bactrim from appearing in the "Current Medication" list of this note, it will also keep it from appearing the "Current Medication" list of future encounters.

Brian, thanks for the info. I'll just have to stay on top of this, but at least if I mess up, I can fix it. Peggy