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Printing Letters from within EMR OR external PDF files

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Last Post by blackmanb 10 years ago

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blackmanb

(@blackmanb)

Posts: 268

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Topic starter

I would like to put a button on my form that will cause a "Letter" to be printed from the EMR. Right now we have to manually click the [Print] menu bar button, then select the subfolder and Letter we want to generate.

As far as I can tell – this cannot be done.

If it can be done – please post how here…

I have read various tips on using runprocess(), runshellopen(), runtextprocess() or fileOpen() etc… for accessing/printing external files (PDF's).

Those tips are helpful too, and if you can post those here, I would appreciate it.

We have not upgraded to CPS 12 yet, was wondering if CPS 12 will allow printing letters from a MEL command, similar to how we use PRINTHANDOUT()

The reason we want to print a Letter instead of a Handout is that we do not want the "handout header" to print on every page. Handouts do not allow suppression of the handout header. Printing the same thing as a Letter - the Letter header can be suppressed by unchecking it when printing a letter.

So - optionally - will CPS 12 allow suppressing a Handout header ?

- Beverly

Posted : July 8, 2014 9:31 am

gibsonmi

(@gibsonmi)

Posts: 827

Prominent Member

I think your best bet is to supress the handout header, thats how I do it. Go into handout header in administration, for each bit of code you need an if -then statement. So for handouts that i dont want a header on I will put '**' in the title, my if-then statements will say {if match(PRINT_TITLE,"**")>0 then "" else LOC.PRIMPHONE endif} or whatever it is. Also, if you dont want a large space at the top when its done, the line breaks for the header have to be included in the brackets.

You can go the external PDF route too, but there will be no record of it printing in the chart unless you also save it to an observation term or something at the same time. I have never used that method so I'll let others speak to it.

Posted : July 9, 2014 12:01 am

blackmanb

(@blackmanb)

Posts: 268

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Topic starter

Michael – thank you !

I had tried this technique originally – but our Handout Header contains our logo as an image. I could not figure out how to use MEL to exclude printing the image. The "if stmt" did not work, MEL code broken. Do you have a suggestion ?

I also have external PDF's to print. So I would still appreciate any tips on printing stuff. The simpler the better. For example, I know I have adobe on my machine, but it may not be on the providers systems. For printing PDF's, I am assuming we would need to have adobe "? reader" installed on each "users" system. – correct? That's if we use a runprocess or openfile type command to open the PDF then click on print within adobe reader.

Preferrably, I would just like a button that would send to "whatever" printer is being used by the EMR. But I get the impression that I have to explicitly reference the exact printer if I am using, say, a runprocess on a batch file. That could get hairy, figuring out which printer to send to.

Yeah, I've been looking into this for a while….

- Beverly

Posted : July 9, 2014 3:54 am

DavidShower

(@davidshower)

Posts: 1255

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Take a look at this thread:

Print a PDF?

Posted : July 9, 2014 8:11 am

blackmanb

(@blackmanb)

Posts: 268

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Topic starter

I had read through that thread "Print a PDF".

I suppose I could set up a fancy batch file then pass the parameters to it from a runprocess command within the EMR (filepath to PDF, preferred printer based on LOC or logged in user, etc...). What a pain 🙁

Is there anything about GE providing a new MEL command to print a letter template ?

Posted : July 9, 2014 9:30 am

gibsonmi

(@gibsonmi)

Posts: 827

Prominent Member

I have never heard of any plans to do this, and it's not in 12. I don't have images on my header for handouts (and this might be why, I don't remember) but if you want to see an example I can email you a text file with our header in it...

Posted : July 9, 2014 9:40 am

blackmanb

(@blackmanb)

Posts: 268

Reputable Member

Topic starter

Michael,

Thanks but not necessary. I am able to use the {if…then…else…endif} technique to control what prints in the handout header, it works - just not for the logo image.

The logo image ALWAYS prints at the top of each page. Not sure that's really necessary.

I may end up just removing the logo from the header, and instead insert it at the top of each handout. I have to think about that…

Thank you for the tips. I think this "thread" should almost be its own forum topic, because printing issues are discussed and scattered throughout the forums. Would be nice to have it all in one place.

Admins – what do you think ?

Posted : July 10, 2014 4:16 am

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