Patient Education

Introduction

Note this is for OpenEMR version 4.2.0 and higher.

This section needs more information and better organization. Until then, here are some notes about the patient education features developed for MU2.

• There's a new code type RXCUI (RxNorm Concept Unique Identifiers) for medications/drugs. These are primarily intended to be inserted into "medication" issues in the same way that diagnoses are for other issues. Doing this will allow easy access to patient education materials.

• You can access patient education when looking at a list of issues by clicking on the displayed medication or diagnosis code.

• To support loading RXCUI codes there is a new module interface/super/load_codes.php which is accessed via Administration -> Other -> Native Data Loads. This is our first "easy" loader app for the codes table, and anyone interested should seriously consider extending it for other code types (CPT4, HCPCS, etc.); it was written with that in mind.

• When entering lab order types into Procedures -> Configuration you should also put the corresponding LOINC code into the "Standard Code" field. This will allow lookup of corresponding patient education materials by clicking on the order code in the lab results display. Note we have no lookup table of LOINC codes, you just have to type them into the configuration.

• You can find a handy list of the LOINC codes most frequently used for lab test orders at: http://loinc.org/downloads/usage/orders

• Patient education lookup from lab results depends on a LOINC code being returned by the lab as the result code. You access the materials by clicking on the result code in the results display.

• There's a new module interface/patient_file/education.php to display education information from either MedlinePlus Connect or from the local filesystem.

• A practice that wants to have its own patient education content for various code types should put them as PDF files into the sites/<siteid>/documents/education/ directory. The tool at Administration -> Files has been updated to support putting them there, and the filenames have a prescribed format which is described in that tool.