Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Flagging blood thinners

Is there a way to flag a blood thinner? I'm thinking a blood thinner may be in a different color then the rest of the meds or maybe highlighted.

There's no way to "Flag" a blood thinner in the medication list. There are flags built into amazing charts that can be customized.

What is it exactly that you are trying to do?

When a medication is put in, I would like to have it show up on their med list as a different color or maybe highlighted

Why would you make such an unreasonable request? I asked for the black and white checkered flag to be made red instead or to make it flash to draw attention to it. Unfortunately, most suggestions made to the AC development team are ignored.

April,

Why do you want to flag a blood thinner? (That would have been the better question to ask). I know you want it a different color, I'm just trying to understand why.

Marty,

If you have a surgical practice, you might want to flag a blood thinner as an extra measure of security that it would not be overlooked.

Ed,

I was thinking the same thing. You can always use the yellow box in the note to put that the patient is on blood thinners. You can also use reports to find which patients are on blood thinners.

If I can understand exactly why she wants to highlight the med, we might be able to come up with an alternative solution that could work

I would love for AC to create a pop-up window that would open when the patienr's chart opens. Sometimes you need an in-your-face reminder about certain critical issues regarding a patient. We used to put a bright red sticker on the old paper charts, and there was no overlooking it. This would be something that would be easy to insert into the program. I have asked several times for this addition, but it falls on deaf ears.

Amazing Charts had this in versions 1, 2 and, I believe, version 3. As soon as you opened the chart, it popped up. Not sure why Jon took this out. Maybe a HIPAA thing. Maybe just something not HIPAA but equally as dangerous.

When you open the chart now, you can see the yellow box, but you know to look at it. It isn't "in your face," so to speak. But, with the yellow box, it drew the attention of everyone, and some times there are things on the yellow note you don't want seen.

AC has always needed more preferences. If it weren't a HIPAA issue, then the individual doctor could decide if he or she wanted it that way.

This one falls in the "work around category":
Go to the patient's chart, summary page, and on the right side, use the "Alerts and Directives" section. Click "Add/edit" and in the window that opens, click "Add new", select Level "high". Under "Name" put "Anti-coagulated" (or just select "Alert") and under "Details" put "On Coumadin". Save it and close the chart.
This does not show in the chart but is pretty eye-catching when you select the patient in the patient list.

So, here is a workaround. It works great unless you are particular about the formatting of your chart. The formatting isn't that great anyway, so what the hell. But, here is what I do.

I use a lot of Lamictal and some Depakote. As you are probably aware, you can use these together, but you need to be aware about the dosing. So, I just screw around with the script to allow it to flag itself.

So, I prescribe Lamictal 200 mg oral tablet (already have started low and gone slow) the regular way, so it can be eRxd and saved to the med list.

Then, you can write a script for {LAMICTAL}, and it will show up in the med list with the brackets, all caps and italicized. The sig will be all white. You can use other characters there like @@@@@@@@@@@@@@, which stand out, but then they show up in the note or letters. The brackets insure that the medication is always at the top. The brackets also insure that the script, if clicked on, will always appear red in the writer, so it isn't sent to the pharmacy by error.

Finally, you can use the pharmacist note to state why it is flagged. Like patient on Lamictal. Caution with Depakote.

I actually use < > instead of { } as it looks better.

Marty, This is the exact reason why I would like the blood thinners highlighted somehow.

Thank you for all of your help and suggestions.

You can run a report by medication classes anticoagulants
This will run you a reports up on patients who are taking any anticoagulants
This is is run from reports and encounters and medications