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Does anyone have a process where non-technical staff handle patient matching errors in LinkLogic? A lot of the time these require some investigation about where the documents should go or if a new chart needs to be created. We'd like to separate these documents out and send them to Medical Records for resolution without requiring staff to go digging in HL7 files.
Initially I thought we could have Qvera monitor the folder and convert the files into PDF or another readable format, but that doesn't seem possible. My next thought was to see if LinkLogic could automatically create charts for these documents (which could be merged later if found to be duplicates) or send them to a desktop for processing, but I don't see a way to do that.
In LinkLogic > Task Options, there's a setting "automatically print imported documents" which looked promising, but I can't find documentation on what that does.
Is there any alternative to using LinkLogic to resolve these errors? We're open to third party solutions if needed.
Posted : August 3, 2017 9:32 am
We run all of our interfaces through Mirth Connect, which is like Qvera, but free.
Your first idea is possible because Mirth can monitor a folder for file age before picking it up. Mirth can query a database (some javascript assembly required), and a lot of other things.
Mirth also provides a web-based (JVM really) interface that anyone can use to search HL7 messages. Could it be simpler? Sure, but it works reliably and provides the IT department a lot of control.
In CPS, demographic interfaces (ADT) can create a new patient record. What message types would you want to create a new patient record for? Take a lab for example. The workflow could be Mirth picks up the ORU, queries the database for the patient, if the patient doesn't exist, Mirth creates and sends an ADT first to create the patient, then sends the ORU.
That's just a few thoughts off the top of my head. I'm sure some others will chime in as well.
Mirth does have some learning curve, but it's well worth it in the long run.
-dp
Posted : August 3, 2017 10:39 am
It is certainly possible to create documents in either Qvera or Mirth. You would lose quite a bit of the functionality by saving to RTF/PDF. For example, observation values would not be part of the message so they would either need to be manually added by medical records or would be missing from the import.
What type of HL7 files are in there now? Where are they from and why do they not match an existing patient?
At our Clinic, IT handles all of the HL7 documents that don't match a patient. It is probably a 5-10 min process daily to clear out the LL error queue. The overwhelming majority of the HL7 files do match patients but don't process in automatically because some piece of the demographics is off on the inbound file.
Posted : August 3, 2017 11:22 am
We have a non technical staff member managing this daily.We are Oracle EMR with multi-specialty and shared chart model. Our hospital interface engine generates a lot of the messages we send in but not all. She contacts IT when and if she is stuck - like there is a malformed message or unusual situation. We have appts, labs, demographics and several other document types coming in so there are various reasons they sit in error queue and not all are in need of creating new chart. In the past we didn't want charts created automatically or we could have set that option in linklogic I think? For example when a rx refill request came in for a patient that was from a provider's old practice (prior to 9.10) or other reasons we got a document where we weren't actually planning to see the patient in a given office. If she isn't sure if we should create new chart, she contacts the office of the incoming document to see if they plan to see the patient or not before creating chart. We do have Qvera for immunizations so maybe we can consider automating at some point.
Posted : August 4, 2017 2:21 am
Topic starter
The reason we have so many errors is that a hospital sends us their discharge summaries, op reports, etc. if the patient says they see one of our doctors. Often times the patient isn't ours yet, but will be calling to make an appointment. Other times they are new babies that don't have charts yet. The documents come over with the hospital's MRN. Since we aren't capturing obs from those documents, it would be ok to have them in PDF format.
Thanks for the suggestions. We'll look into Mirth or Qvera settings to see if we can work on it from that angle.
Posted : August 4, 2017 2:27 am
If you are looking for someone to write an interface for you, send me an email: [email protected]
If you are looking to write it yourself, feel free to bounce any questions/ideas you have off of me, I would be glad to assist.
Posted : August 4, 2017 3:48 am
