ListofCurrentMeds, ListofAllergies

I would like to request two new $vars for acroforms, and if possible for postscript templates. I think it's possible now to make a simple list of allergies and list of current meds. Just making a simple comma separated list would be fine.

Those would be helpful to me.

Are we talking drug allergies?

Yeah, just a simple list of drug allergies and a simple list of current medications.

for sake of completeness ...



I would propose


current

allergies


temp

stopped

Allergens

Completeness is not a satisfactory reason!

current - list of most important medications.(needed)


allergies - list of medications the patient should not receive again.


temp - essential for me, I will be adding many temporary drugs to patients lists ... on major distinction for me will be ... I will renew any non-narcotic Current med over fax or phone. I won't always renew meds in the Temporary area. Temp helps me with screen real estate as well ... as many of my patients completely fill the Current Tab (needs scroll bar)


stopped - transferring a list of previously tried medications to consultants can be helpful.


Allergens - I won't need this one as much.

For Acroforms .. I don't think so.

The reason I'm requesting a List of Meds and List of Allergies is that these two items are required on a lot of routine forms we fill out, including our own encounter forms. The List of Meds is presumed to be more-or-less current, so it probably should include both current and temp. I don't think I would use a $var for Stopped or Allergens much that I can think of, I would just check those in synapse.

I leave drugs that I'm no longer using still in temp ... rather then deleting them.

So, that wouldn't work for me. But if you're scrupulous about removing temp drugs ....

Currently we have $medications which shows a note with all the medications

I take it you want a simple comma delimited list of drugs that will populate a field.

Yes, that's exactly what I need.

Ok, we now have $current-medications and $drug-allergies in Acroforms. But not in the PWP.

This works just fine. On the US HealthWorks encounter templates, using Times italic-bold font at 6 pitch, I can fit about 5-6 allergies and 4-5 medications on the allotted lines for each. Even at 6 pitch in PDF it's pretty readable, much better than my (or the staff's) crappy penmanship.

Excellent ... I have no current way of testing this!

I have AcroForms working pretty well now thanks to Grahams new accoutrements. Still working on some text macros to speed things up further. I generated a WC-Established patient back exam form my favorite test patient, Bob Baad to show you all.

Looks good

Should current medications and allergies fill the field with "none" if that is the case?

I debated on that one, rather than write allergies twice, I decided just to address drug side effects/adverse reactions on the "Any medication/ treatment problems or side effects:" line. Some redundancy here.

Q: Should current medications and allergies fill the field with "none" if that is the case?

Essential.

However, I've been putting an allergy of NKDA - - to show I have asked.

Ah, you will all notice that in my haste I didn't catch all of the default boxes. I have made the parent PDF template with all of the exam boxes checked no or neg, and some other default boxes checked. I missed the box "Associated Signs/Symptoms" mistakenly checked no. Just illustrates that point... you have to find the right balance with default text on templates you design.