sstouffs, we received the following email from GE support:
"I think this is a defect which was introduced
in 10.1.2.210. I have seen this happen primarily when the patient’s
appointment is set to “complete” or “checked out” before the visit is touched
to change the visit from new to in progress. If this is the workflow for
this client then the easiest workaround is this. What creates the
duplicate is when a visit is modified from New to In Progress, CPS is trying
change the appointment status to a status assigned to the CATEGORY of Checked
Out in the Administration->Appointment Status dialog. If it is already
in this category, it creates a duplicate visit. What I have been doing is
finding out what status the front office us using to check a patient, and
setting the category for that status to NONE. Then you have to create
another appointment status that they will not be selecting and set its category
to Checked Out. That way they can keep the same workflow, and the
appointment will be able to flip to that category when the visit is updated and
a duplicate will not be created. So for example, if the front office is
changing the appointment status to “checked out” and it is in a category of
Checked Out, then I would change that status’s category to None, and then
create a new status called “completed” and assign it to the category of Checked
Out. That way the front office doesn’t have to change their workflow and
the duplicates will stop. If that doesn’t make sense let me know."
So here is what we did:
- Created an Appt Status of "Checked Out" with a Category of "none"
- Left Appt Status of "Completed" with a Category of "Checked Out"
- Re-organized the list of Appt Statuses.
- moved "Checked Out" near the top (for staff to use)
- moved "Completed" to the bottom (not for staff use)
- Educated Staff to change Appointment status at check out to "Checked Out" rather than "Completed"
In addition, we also found that the system would automatically update the Appointment
status to "Completed" if a co-pay was posted. In theory, it's not a problem as long as
the check out staff changes the Appt Status to "Checked Out", however, this also causes
a problem for the clinical staff looking at the schedule to see if the appt is
"Arrived (Checked-in)". So the staff posting the co-pay must go back to the appt and
change the status from "Completed" to "Arrived (Checked-in)"
We also tried not having ANY appt statuses set with a Category of "Checked Out". But that
resulted in duplicate tickets as well.
Let me know if you have any questions. -mjj
Posted : July 25, 2012 7:18 am
