Digital clinical data for Occupational Medicine companies

Most Occupational Medicine companies perform periodic examinations where doctors record the data in blank paper forms. This practice represents a waste of time, because the doctor must question each patient about old episodes of work accidents and diseases that the company already knows. Employees may also omit important records. And it is known that this type of control is done against the clock, because the labor doctors have little time to review all the employees of a company. The digital clinical history would solve this problem.

The ART in Argentina and other countries are providers of Labour Insurance, covering work accidents and occupational diseases. These ART run periodical checkups of every worker, looking for work-related health problems. These companies are starting to request that the occupational medicine companies inform them in real time about the work accidents and the results of the periodic exams. This also implies to record all the data in a fast way, that both companies agree on the format and on the interconnection norms of both servers. Usually the HL7 standard is used, but this is not implemented in all the digital systems used in our environment. OpenEMR is ideal for this purpose, because it can also be used in a tablet or even a cell phone, whether the system runs in the cloud or in a local server of the company. It is required to program some simple forms for the most common events in each company, and to make an appropriate interface for the connection of the servers.

The business can expand. The ART can propose the use of this system to other occupational medicine companies. Likewise, the adopting labor medicine company can offer the interconnection of servers to other ARTs with which it works.

Request from us an example and technical and financial information.

Features of the Inpatient Module for OpenEMR

The Inpatient Module manages beds, patients and stays. Load the OpenEMR system with Admin or Physician rights.

After clicking on the Patient/Client option, the new ítems appear in the bottom. In this image we show the options offered to the Administrator user:

initial inpatient menu

  • Inpatient options / A home page for the new options. It lists the reports that any user can run.
  • New bed/ It lets you create new beds, in different areas, floors or rooms. The beds can have attributes like male/female, TV or oxygen. Other features are possible with customization,
  • Assign patient bed/ Associates a patient already in the OpenEMR system to an empty bed. It records the entry date.
  • Assign patient bed – Clinical/ This is a regular LBF form, which records data outside the inpatient system, like reason for the inpatient stay, the entering doctor, diagnosis and other data.
  • Change patient bed/ It changes the bed, for same-day changes, without changing the stay number.
  • Release patient from bed/ It finishes the stay in bed
  • Edit beds/ Allows to change bed number, floor, room, área and attributes, like gender, TV or Oxygen. The only item that never changes is the Bed ID.
  • Inpatient list/ Lists all the current inpatients, with associated data, including cost.
  • Release list/ Lists all the already released patients, with associated data, including cost.
  • Free beds/ Lists the free beds.
  • Patient report/ Lists patients by name
  • Area-floor report/ / Lists patients by area and floor.

Continue reading “Features of the Inpatient Module for OpenEMR”

Our Inpatient Module for OpenEMR

Inpatient Module

The hospitalization system covers the main data registration needs in a hospital or clinic.

The first stage is to create the beds. A bed is always inside a room, in turn within a floor and within an area. The area can be General, Emergency, Surgery, Maternity, Intensive therapy, etc. The beds can be male/female, have TV or Oxygen. Other features can be added upon request. Continue reading “Our Inpatient Module for OpenEMR”

Cost of the Electronic Medical Record system

Factors affecting the cost of the EMR

Factors based on number of users, data volume, implemented features 

There are many variables to consider to estimate the installation cost of an EMR system.

These are the standard questions about the final users, which we usually ask in order to quote an installation and a maintenance service. The answer will give us an idea of the intensity of use, of user diversity, of the amount of data to be managed and of the complexity of the initial installation and subsequent adaptations and configurations.

Questions for the health administrators

  For a fast automated quote see our calculator and you will know how many hours of a technician will be needed to install the software.  Continue reading “Cost of the Electronic Medical Record system”

Inpatient module for OpenEMR – Ongoing project

The OpenEMR was originally for outpatients, but many claimed a new feature that allows the monitoring of hospitalizations. We are developing an Inpatient Module, including location, type of bed, floor, room, bed number, additional room , such as TV and oxygen, etc.

The reports include: Free beds – Inpatient days – Standard Inpatient  Number – Released patients – Accumulated cost for bed use

Continue reading “Inpatient module for OpenEMR – Ongoing project”

Installation of OpenEMR in a medium size clinic in Southern Argentina.

We have installed OpenEMR in a medium size clinic, in the province of Chubut, Argentina, in September 2016. So far, 7 months later, there are 100 registered users and almost 10,000 patients. There were no problems so far.

The administration asked us for some reports, beyond those programmed in the OpenEMER system. For example, a list of patients without health insurance. We solved it with a customized MySQL query.

A Gynecology form was implemented with some standard questions.

Continue reading “Installation of OpenEMR in a medium size clinic in Southern Argentina.”

Legal issues concerning digital medical records in Argentina

I see on Facebook Alejandro Abraham’s initiative for the country to adopt the Digital Clinical History, and I have already adhered. Law 26.529 that regulates the rights of the patient, in terms of the autonomy of the will, the information and the clinical documentation, specifies certain guidelines that a clinical history must meet. Among these guidelines, there is the confidentiality of information between the doctor and the patient, and any health professional who may have access to it. Article 14 specifies that the patient is the owner of the clinical history and that at its simple request a copy of it must be provided. But in turn, article 17, indicates the uniqueness of the clinical records by establishment. That is, each health facility must have a particular clinical history, completely isolated from any other institution.

Relevant in Law 26,529, articles 2 (sections C and D), article 13, article 14, article 17 and article 18 are relevant. I believe that all health professionals waste a lot of time and effort trying to understand the handwriting of colleagues in all types of clinical documents, which causes delays and sometimes serious errors.

The forums of biochemists and pharmacists are full of queries about what the doctor meant in this or that a doodle. And as it remains mandatory that prescriptions be MANUSCRIPTS, the responsible is the same State and its adherence to archaic legislation. Added Nov.2018 : the new legislation on electronic signature says that this modality can replace previous methods of signature, which authorizes to sign recipes digitally. But the body of the recipe is still subject to the letter of the law, which requires it to be handwritten. By not repealing or changing the Law of Exercise of Medicine, the issue remains confused and subject to controversy.

New features in version 4.2.2

This new release of OpenEMR has several interesting new features. Check them out in our demo site at medical-records.net

  • 2014 ONC Certified as a Modular EHR
  • Compatible with PHP7
  • Compatible with most recent versions of MySQL and MariaDB
  • Added a modern user interface
  • Added full support for right to left languages
  • Added an About link/page
  • Numerous Bug Fixes
  • Supported in 30 languages
  • Numerous Security Fixes and Security Improvements

Contact us for any inquiry.

Ask us

How to see X Ray images in the computer

In order to record X rays  a Pacs – Dicom server is usually needed. A demo for a DICOM reader is located at: http://medical-records.net/dicom3/

This is a tomography (X Ray in multiple layers), and can be enlarged, reduced, brightened, darkened, and moved around.

This is quite a complex issue, the readers usually work together with PACS  servers. PACS mean: picture archiving and communication system. They provide security, compression, backup, instant communication (the radiologist notifies the clinician about the imagen availability), etc. There is also a wide price margin, from free to multimillion dollar figures.

There are many options for advanced users, and they can be installed gradually by end user request.  We always suggest separate servers for systems and data, because images are very demanding in terms of gigabytes.

Ask us about PACS server installation in your site or ours.