Home Forums Discussions Feedback and Recommendations Notifying alert for allergic medication

Hi, all.

I eventually purchased AC yesterday. I had database error and customer service helped me out. I like the customer service. It was good experience.

Do we have an alarming function preventing physician to prescribe meds patient is allergic to?

If not, how about this function? We can name it "avoided medication" or someting.
Not only meds pt is allergic to, but also meds pt. tried earlier but disliked could be added on this avoid meds list.

To avoid confusion, we can have drug searching function for this mainly to avoid misspelling kind of error allow accidentally prescribing these meds.

When we prescribe any of these meds, AC automatically shoot pop up window or block the prescription.

Just an idea...

Alan Chang Kim, MD

In order to do this, we need a medication list that is free of error.

I have had to apologize to pharmacies several times this week as I returned to using the default medication database which gives choices that don't exist (metrogel 7.5%, etc.).

Roy, I thought you had overhauled your personal database. Why did you go back to the default database? Was there not enough frustration in your life?

The medication database definitely needs a major overhaul. Anybody who uses it should keep their eyes open for misspellings and incorrect dosages.

Jon uses a free medication database from the FDA in order to keep costs down. You would think the FDA would offer a better database, but there you go. I guess that's why it's free.

As far as the allergies go, it would be nice to have an automatic allergy-checker. There are EMRs that offer them, but they cost $5000-10,000 per user, at least.

For $995, this is what you get: entering an allergy causes a red warning box to appear in the prescription writer field. This is a step up from paper charts that I have not stopped appreciating yet.

It is true that you can still write for a prescription the patient is allergic to; I have done it myself. Yet I can hardly fault Amazing Charts because I don't look at the red box. Maybe Jon could make it flash in an annoying way....

Alan, there is an Inactive Medication section of the Prescripton Writer where you could keep records of past ineffective medications, along with a brief explanation about why you placed it there.

Brian,
I experimented too much with my medication database and it became non-functional. I think I deleted an essential database that appeared non-essential. I still haven't figured out the relationship between MEDNAMES, MEDDETAIL and FORMULARY. I had thought FORMULARY was not needed but I'm afraid I was wrong.

Ouch, that hurts.

If you would like, I will send you a copy of one I made.

I think all the entries are correct, it is just incomplete. There are some common drugs that are not in there, and you would have to add them when you came to them.

If you are interested, send me a PM or an email, and I will email you a zipped copy.

AlanKim, welcome and in my brief experience (just one year now) I am already finding this very useful. When you 'inactivate' a medication, I add a comment in the yellow box, (ineffective or caused GI upset) and then move on. Later when I am searching for a better choice I open the inactive meds and there are all the failed meds with a note on why it was discontinued. Seems to work well.
I would like the Allergies box to be bigger, or to be expandable, I have had a patient with more true allergies than I can fit in the box. Then I put, "See Past Med Hx" and type the allergies as the first item under history.
By the way, another tip I came up with is to label the Lab results when they are imported with any helpful facts. For example on a difficult Hyperlipidemic under 'item subject' I include the dose and name of the statin. That way I can tell at a glance what has been tried, (also could be seen as inactive) but also what the result was on each drug, in case I have to return to the 'least ineffective' of several poor choices.

Roy and BCMD I don't want to hijack this thread, but I am desperate to learn more about the list of meds. I would gladly give up the free list, it is so corrupted, and I would gladly enter my own, but how? I will start a thread.

OK, I can't not weigh in on this one. As for the medication database, there is but one way at this point. Start from scratch. I know Brian and Roy know this, but I spent an hour and a half every night for over a month to build mine. While I was genuinely fascinated when Roy cut the tables down to two, I have still left mine with Formulations, Listings, MedNames and MedDetails. You just change listings. There are some details, but you can search the forum as I have given complete details in at least three threads. You can download mine from the download section, add the adult meds, and you are done with it.

@Brian -- OK, I have to admit I have somehow misses the red thing. Please explain where that is.

Also, while Brian is correct that Alan is asking too much for a thousand dollar EMR, he makes a valid point about adding old meds to an allergy section IF they would get flagged. Yes, you can open the inactive med section, but I frequently forget to do this. I have asked that the medication list be moved to the bottom so that ALL meds, both active and inactive, can be seen at the same time with the reason they are inactive listed to the right.

# DATABASES: Of course, Bert's right, there are a lot of advantages in typing up your own medication list from scratch. The only medications in there are the ones you want. You start typing, and the medication you're after is just going to leap onto the screen.

Bert's pediatric database is very nice, and needs to be bumped to the top of the download list so people can try it out.

Unfortunately, I have tendinitis and I can't type for prolonged periods of time like that, just short bursts.

For that reason, I have learned to convert other people's typed lists into databases that I can import into Amazing Charts. This has its advantages as well. I will post more on this later.

Others have expressed interest in the fruit of my labor, so I am going to upload a few of them in the next couple of days.

# RED THING: Prescription writer. Bottom left hand corner. If the patient has an allergy.

Oh, yeah, that red box...

Hey guys,
How hard would it be to have a "thing", a program or utility in AC, perhaps in the Admin section, that would allow a doc to go thru the Vaccnine and Rx sections, and kind of check off on the drugs and vaccines they want? And perhaps this could even populate with a gobal thing, like Med "A" with all its various half a dozen doses as the first listing for that med or vaccine, with the option to instead pick and choose any of the half dozen doses you may or may not want to use instead of the global option.

I kind of envisioning something like the charting template section most of you checked off on various templates when you first set up AC for each provider years ago. This way now Jon has given us all the meds and vaccines we might ever want to use, all while allowing us to customize it to each provider's needs and wishes. And to get even cooler, have a way to change and adjust doseages freehand.

Lastly, there should be a global button to not allow or to allow updates to change the database. Or like the first time there is an new update, there could be a warning telling the provider, that there are updates of new meds or vaccines to reveiw and choose from. Just a thought....

Good thoughts, Paul.

I am posting a new medication database. It will appear under "Helpful Downloads" after Vinny approves it. It will remain there unchanged, so folks can always download it, if they delete their original.

If people will email problems with the database to me, requested medications, discontinued medications, I could update it from time to time.

Also, there are improvements to the vaccine feature on the way.