Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Order Tracking

Just discovered there is a place to track orders under VIEW. It is searchable by order, patient, date and a place to check ordered, pending or completed. Wish I had discovered this a long time ago.

The orders within the patient chart are not searchable like this, but that's ok. Now I know where/how to track them

Does anyone know if the "show this patient" function is supposed to work? I could not get it to work and could not get it to let me to specify date ranges.

Maybe there is something in admin that would help.

Thanks in advance.

When you create orders send it to the group frontdesk or nurse
A message goes to their inbox.
To see what orders are active on John Doe, the staff pulls up John Doe from their Inbox and all orders for John Doe pull up.
You can see "show this patient" function being active when done through the messages

Sunil,
I don't know if is different in 6.5, but in 6.3, orders would regularly "get lost" in the system. I have had to send a copy of the orders to myself, save them and them forward them for fear of them being lost in cyberspace.

I did a trial just now and it pulls it up in that same view as if you chose orders from the "View" tab. I am going to have them start marking them pending until the results come in and not to mark it off until they get the results in the chart.

Thanks

Vicki,

When looking for orders make sure on 2nd tad, it has show everybody's orders and the next box has multiple options:Ordered, pending, completed, deleted.

Also all orders on a patient show under Past Encounters and choose orders.
you can only see the orders, but cannot do anything in that screen.
There is another post on the forum that also expains this in details. Will try to get a link for you

Do you know what we have to do to be able to search by individual patient. It can sort which is ok for now, just wish we could search by pt and we could search the orders in the patient chart. All in good time

Just tried to get answer from AC support but their answer sounded bogus. I haven't really used orders for inhouse labs-- we just manually input labs like Strep test and U/A in the Plan or Assessment section and send the chart to the MA. The MA puts in the result and sends chart back to Provider.
I am trying to transition to using the orders section but cannot figure out the flow-- when I send a order, it sends a msg to the MA but does not send the chart. When the MA marks the order as complete and sends it back, again it comes in as msg and there is no update of the order or result in the patient's chart. Can someone please explain how orders work for INHOUSE LABS? (I don't want to use it for outgoing labs at all).
I need to start using it for Strep test for MU.

I am having similar issues figuring out the workflow.

I do not have any lab interface yet as the few I contacted were not interested in my low volume business. Most of my labs I get from my PCP's. I do order on a few patients and thought would add in as order on the lab tab which is sent to my staff for them to print it out and give to the patient. But it just goes as a message to them and we couldn't figure out how to print the lab slip. I was able to print it right at the moment of the order entry myself but not if I close that ordering window.

Similarly for doing or scheduling in-house tests like EKG, Echo, Stress tests, is it better to just add that in the plan and tell staff verbally to do/schedule or enter it in as an order? Do we then need to close out these orders when done or the report comes through? I am not sure what is better.

Order Tracking is an area that I would like to have more robust. It would help greatly to be able to sort the orders in the patient chart. I am often in the process of charting and need to see if an order was made or ordered etc. Now we do have a workaround in the orders under the View tab (yeah!!). I have not yet figured out how to activate the sort by name feature for orders under the view tab. If anyone knows, please let me know.

It would be very helpful to be able to check the status of an order while in an encounter.
Currently, the orders are there, but like the diagnoses in the summary page, they are not sortable/searchable.

The orders functionality could also be greatly increased for the staff with a simple LINK from the order status in the patients chart (Past Encounters, Orders) back to the Orders tracking section (View,Orders).

Currently you can view a patients order status in the chart but if its not completed you have to go into the View Orders system and scroll through a large list to update the status of the order. Then after updated it redirects you to the top at which point the staff again scroll through a large amount of patients to get to the second and third order for the same patient.

It would save a lot of time for busy practices to click on the order in the chart and have the order pop-up (like it does from the inbox)at which point you can see the full note of the status or edit it.

Love that idea about the popup box!!

When you generate an order it goes to the inbox of the person you placed the order to, I use Group:frontoffice.
Then any person in front office can see this order in their inbox.
When the order is opened from the inbox you can filter by patient.

If you open orders thru view the box is grayed out

The MA picks up the order
Enter the results
Highlights the results and contol C to copy
Pulls up patients name from patient list and then right click
Addendum
Paste into area (Cntrl V)
Then save to chart (middle box) assign to the date of service

Is there a way to reprint a patient's orders such that:
A.C. doesnt print out separate page for each individual test.

Selecting multiple test in the "view orders"
Right clicking and choosing "print all selected"

Does not print them all on one page, it breaks them up into
as many pages as there are individual test.

Is there way to do this?

Reconciling orders has long been a major weakness of AC that has been much discussed. We need a way to reconcile the orders when the labs come in and are saved to the chart. Presently, my work around includes printing the orders, putting in a notebook, and making sure the patient gets it done later. This has been advised by my insurance company.

Hate the way AC re-prints lab orders
I print to.aPDF file then print that to paper and store the PDF file to disk.
I use a AutoHotkey script to scape the patient name from the AC window, name the file appropriately and click the print in the PDF viewer that pops up when printing to PDF.
When we get to MU2 the need for more granularity of the orders for the mandatory electronic ordering, will necessitate that AC be able to identify individual lab tests, probably using
LOINC codes (just as it does now for incoming results).
One would think that a coded order could easily be reconciled with a coded result. Wouldn't one?

I have recently upgraded to 6.5
When you print them while in the order screen, it prints all labs on one page
However if you forget and it is printed later, it prints one lab per page
Slow improvements in 6.5.

Sunil

Amazing Charts, are you listening? We have been discussing this for years. The reconciliation functionality in the II is broken and has never worked. We need to quickly and efficiently reconcile incoming lab results with the orders with a drop down menu. When will you get this fixed? Ongoing problems like this, that seem easily fixable, are what keep AC from being a truly high class EMR system.

I did encounter an alternative method to deal with the orders
If you go to check out you can put up orders on a single patient.
This appears to be simpler been going through all the orders under the view and orders

I have this happen alot. I print orders for a patient to do before I see them again and they lose the paper. Is there a way to reprint them?

Scott,

Probably the easiest way is open up the prior note where the labs were ordered under PAST ENCOUNTERS. Highlight with mouse the orders you want to reprint, Right click and select COPY.

Next select MOST RECENT ENCOUNTER tab, click WRITE ORDERS, then select OTHER tab. In the "free text orders" window, left click anywhere on the box to get the cursor there then hit CTRL-V. Click "add" at the bottom of the screen then select the "Print Orders" tab and print to whatever printer you use. Exit out but don't save anything and you should be good.

Not the best solution but it keeps everything on one page.

Linking orders from charts to orders section is a great idea! I third that suggestion.

I may be missing something here, because there are two things going on, but if the above occurs, I just click CTRL + O, highlight the order and click print from the left hand column. It brings up the exact duplicate of your former requisition.

Or else I am. I can use Bert's method to print a single order, but not multiple.

Thanks.

Gene