Templates for Patient Documents
Overview
This feature is new as of OpenEMR release 4.1.3 (march 2014). It provides the ability to upload Templates in an Open Document format (MS Word or OpenOffice or LibreOffice), or as plain text or perhaps for other formats. Use them as boilerplate for creating documents that can then be uploaded to the patient documents area in the usual way or downloaded to the "Local" computer.
- {PatientName} (FirstName Middle Lastname)
- {PatientID} (External ID)
- {PatientDOB} (yyy-mm-dd)
- {DOS} (Date of service in the format of yyyy-mm-dd)
- {ReferringDOC}(Name of refferer doctor)
- {ChiefComplaint}
- {Allergies}
- {ProblemList}
- {PatientSex}
- {Address} (street address only i.e. 1224 Oakdale Rd.)
- {City}
- {State}
- {Zip}
- {PatientPhone} (output in this form: (000)000-0000)
Installing a Template
The first step is to create a Template on your local computer with one of the mentioned word processors.
The to be Uploaded Templates may contain any of these keywords (the fields {...} contain the information entered during Demographics, and other history or summary during the encounter)
Next step is to upload the Template made with the mentioned {.. fields ..} and give the Template a well recognizable name.
Browse => Give the Template the correct name =>
Use the same menu options as before: Template uploading is done via a new menu item, Miscellaneous => Document Templates (and so becomes a generals usable Template).
Using a Template
In the documents area, a drop-list has been added where you may select and download a document.
- To create a document for a certain Client, be sure to enter some information that will show as an encounter.
- The Template always has to be connected to Client information.
Go to Client => Summary => Documents => Patient Information => Search in the line for: Download document-template for this patient and visit. Select Template => Fetch => Make a choice to "Open with" or "Save file" .......
The downloaded document will have its keywords replaced with actual data from the currently selected patient and encounter.
There you are: The file will be opened in your favorite Word processor and is ready for some additional corrections, formatting, do final edits, or save it (perhaps as a PDF). Next the file can be send as e-mail attachment, printed, or saved for later use or upload the finalized file as a patient document in the usual way.
Problems
One gotcha is that the Word Processing Application might insert XML tags randomly into the middle of keywords as you type them in (This happens when using a non-plain text word processor) It keeps the parser fields from being recognized as keywords at download time.
- Advise: keep a list of the Parser Fields as plain text in another plain text file and Copy => Paste to insert them into the document.
