designating active and inactive patients in Synapse

Discussion in 'Feature: Requests and Planning' started by Jason, Feb 2, 2009.

  1. Jason

    Jason Developer / Handyman Staff Member

    I really need this.

    In both my PM and Synapse.

    I don't like seeing old patients in my name searches.
  2. Jason

    Jason Developer / Handyman Staff Member

    Keeping an "active" list is helpful:

    (1) if you want to do a mailing because you are moving. (any mass communication needs an "active" list).


    (2) you know how many patients you have.

    (3) you know what paper charts you can get rid of. (In Ontario, you must wait 7 years).

    (4) might be good to keep a tally of where you are losing patients to.

    (5) I hate seeing old patients in my name searches.



    I'll think up more reasons. I am sure there are lots.
  3. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    So, you want to create a killfile?

  4. Jason

    Jason Developer / Handyman Staff Member

    Add:

    Disease Management (ie. print a list of patients over 50, female, with no result: mammogram). would be nice to not have inactive patients on the list.



    Attached Files:

  5. Jason

    Jason Developer / Handyman Staff Member

    or should "Status" be something like this:
    • Active
    • Left Practice
    • Direct Bill
    • Dead
    • Medicare
    • Inactive

    in the notes I would put the date myself.

    I wonder how many PMs do it. I wonder if this is something that could be Synched with a PM like Medisoft, etc.



    Or maybe: Active Y/N ? and Status: a multi-option list, should be different things.
  6. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    Does Medisoft have an active flag?

  7. Jason

    Jason Developer / Handyman Staff Member

    My current PM doesn't but I am interviewing others !
  8. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    It's easy enough to add an active status flag .. though we already have one, but that is used to indicate whether the patient is an active portal user.

    Then we can modify the search so that you can optionally only search on all patients including active ones.

    I don't advise removing patients from the database.
  9. DrO

    DrO New Member

    Medisoft 9 has an inactive flag that can be set in the Patient/Guarantor screen. The flag appears in the MWPAT database. Once a Chart# is tagged it can no longer be accessed. The Chart#, however, is still accesible. A warning pops up when it is selected: "The patient xxxx is inactive. Please select another patient". This makes selections af similar charts such a drag that a long time ago I decided to forgo tagging the inactives.

    Inactive charts , although present in the database, should remain unseen except for reactivation. Date tags for inactivation and reactivation should be stored in the database. Perhaps a table of inactives with Chart#, full name, DOBandMedicare # (or similar)could be accesible to the administrator for selecting/reactivating a patient.

    DrO
  10. Jason

    Jason Developer / Handyman Staff Member

    >>> Once a Chart# is tagged it can no longer be accessed. The Chart#,
    however, is still accesible. A warning pops up when it is selected:
    "The patient xxxx is inactive. Please select another patient". This
    makes selections af similar charts such a drag that a long time ago I
    decided to forgo tagging the inactives.

    A bit annoying how Medisoft did the inactive/active toggling.

    My suggestions for the GUI changes needed to make

    It should be easy to "reactivate" a patient should they come back after 7 years.

    ie. if you can't find them in the active list, a quick toggle will allow you to search the inactive list.

    Attached Files:

  11. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    This is now done.

    Inactive/deceased patients will still turn up on reports for the moment ... but searching is filtered.
  12. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    BTW, the setting is in Patients/Details/Miscellaneous

    Settings are: Current, Left and Deceased

    if a patient has left and then deceased ... well, you choose.

  13. Jason

    Jason Developer / Handyman Staff Member

    Some ideas

    Attached Files:

  14. Jason

    Jason Developer / Handyman Staff Member

    I don't see much point in the:

    Deceased option.

    I think it adds nothing. Simply adding Deceased to the reason a patient has been made "Inactive" is plenty good enough.

    Active / Inactive - should be the options.


    "Deceased" looks odd on the search window as well.





  15. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    If I want to search on patients who are inactive, I don't want to see the deceased patients.

  16. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    Some ambiguity here ... searching on inactive patients might expect one to see all patients with a BMI > 25.

  17. Jason

    Jason Developer / Handyman Staff Member

    The only time you want to "Search for an Inactive Patient" would be if they come to your office, say they are your doctor, and you can't find them in your EMR. The main purpose of marking a chart as "NOT" active is so they don't show up in searches, etc. Having the ability to easily toggle to searching for dead patients, on the search popup I use 70 times per day is weird.


    LOL.
  18. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    A lot of things that look weird initially will seem more natural as you use it.

  19. Jason

    Jason Developer / Handyman Staff Member

    I'm near 100% certain I will not be searching for dead people.

    In fact, the false delineation, will cause me to have to search inactive patients and then dead people. This will double the searching with little yield.

    Codifying if someone is dead would be helpful for certain purposes, but not for the [F3] needs at hand.


    From the perspective of this need "Switch to new patient", the main goal is to reduce the number of patients that show up in results.

    Thus the data (dead or not) is useful, but not in the context of [F3] Quick Search.

    There should be two options only: Active (the default) or All.
  20. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    If you're 100% certain you won't be searching for the dead, why do you then say you will?

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