Lab Results in Forms (Tech Tuesday #60)

Happy Tuesday!

It’s time again for Tech Tuesday; a weekly series of helpful hints, tips, and workflows that you can use to improve your skills in Accuro®EMR.

I think I’ve been too easy on you the last few weeks. Let’s talk about something complicated this week. The Form Editor is a tool that many have learned, and many have mastered! It is very powerful, but some of this is not so obvious. One of its powerful features is the ability to both display lab results on a form and place lab entry fields on a form. The complicated bit is that display and entry are 2 different lab form components.

A Lab display component is a specific lab result (and date) that you can place on a form. This is useful for showing a most recent lab result for a patient on the form. It cannot accept recording a new result.

A Lab entry component is a small textbox that you can type a lab value into that records that value as a new lab result. This uses the current date as the collection and observation date, and simply puts the result in the EMR as well as on the form. This "save" is done when you save the form, not right away when you type in the result.

With both components on the form together, you can both see the last value and record a new one.

Steps to add a Lab Display Component

1. Open Form Editor from the Tools Menu.
2. Double click the form to edit.
3. From the Components section (bottom left of screen), expand the Components Type by double clicking on the header. Drag a Label onto the form.
4. Right click the Label, select Edit.
5. Give the label a name, (ie: the name of the lab, example "Weight"), then press Save.
6. On the Left side, click the green plus (we are about to add the lab display component to the label).
7. Now on the right side, select "Query" from the Type selection list.
8. In the Query selection list, pick "Lab Result".
9. Now Pick the Test first, then pick the Result. An example would be to choose "Physical History" as the test, then "Weight" as the result.
10. Choose Most Recent from the fourth option. Note the other options here are to display up to 5 recent values, with each value required to be added individually.
11. Press Save.
12. Press OK.
13. Save your form.

Steps to add a Lab Entry Component

1. Open Form Editor from the Tools Menu.
2. Double click the form to edit.
3. From the Components section, expand the Labs Type by double clicking on the header.
4. Find the test, then result you want (ie: Physical History, then Weight).
5. Drag the Result on to the form.
6. Save your form.

By default, not all Accuro Lab Tests are listed as components in the Form Editor; however, you can still add a Lab Entry component for any of your results. Follow the steps above by placing any one of the results onto your form then right click and select Edit. From there, you can select which Lab Test and Lab Result you wish to use.

You could make all sorts of forms with this, or populate fields on a form. Combining lab display and entry on a form so you have one single screen collection point is a very useful thing. If you knew all this already, or are comfortable following along, you are doing very well. It is a very complex part of Accuro, but in complexity lies capability. Happy form building.

Hope you found this helpful! Stay tuned for next week’s Tech Tuesday!

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