Notes and Transactions

Here we will add a sample patient note and transaction.

Patient notes store patient information that is unrelated to the patient's medical condition. Such information may include outstanding balances, changing insurance information or patient requests for actions by the clinic.

Transactions are somewhat similar, but record events that have already occurred. These may be referrals, requests from either the patient or the doctor, or legal transactions.

Cindy Cyan logs in again at the front desk.

Cindy wants to enter a note that a patient's insurance will be changing, and she starts by looking up the patient.

Now we have the patient's summary display, but since Cindy is not authorized to see medical details the summary of issues, immunizations and prescriptions is not displayed.

When using SQL-Ledger with OpenEMR (usually a good thing to do!), the patient's balance due is computed and displayed whenever patient notes are viewed. This will not include any amounts that are billed to insurance and have not yet received a response or payment.

Cindy now clicks on "Notes (More)" to enter the note.

She types in the note and then clicks "Add New Note" to save it.

The new note now appears in the list of notes on the same screen. Observe the checkbox; this is used to control whether the note is "active". You can also see that there are options to view only the active or inactive notes.

Cindy clicks "Patient Notes (Back)" to return to the patient summary.

As you can see, the new note is now in the Notes section.

Now Cindy clicks "Transaction" to enter a transaction. She has been asked by the doctor to handle a referral for this patient.

Cindy selects Referral as the transaction type, and types in the relevant text. Then she clicks "Add New Transaction" to save it.

The referral is now saved and appears in the patient's list of transactions.