Observe that when a surgery, for example, is recorded as a Visits > Visit Type > ‘Hospitalization’ and also recorded as a Treatment > Type, that the Hospitalization and Treatment records both appear on the Medical History Summary(MHS) providing, conceivably, the same information. Since surgeries are treatments, technically, and a hospital visit for a surgery should be recorded, that presents somewhat of a dilemma to avoid duplication on the MHS without having to customize. I’m uncertain how this record keeping issue can be resolved without program changes, but here are my thoughts. Possibly other forum members will join in with their thoughts and experiences.
While less ‘technically correct’ my first choice would be to use Visit Type ‘Hospitalization’ to record hospitalizations and surgeries. Hospitalization on the MHS displays the Date, Doctor and Reason(a text field that permits any information pertinent to the ‘treatment’). Treatments on the MHS, however, only displays the Date and the treatment name and leaves a lot of blank space.
This choice is less technically correct, since hospitalizations are considered ‘inpatient’ events, while the surgical example may well be an ‘outpatient’ event at the hospital, or at a clinic or office. What I believe is most important is for the MHS to provide the clearest, most appropriate summary information for use by doctors and patients alike. Keep in mind, questionnaire forms completed for doctors mainly ask for hospitalizations and surgeries in the same question. The word ‘Treatments’ to elicit surgeries, is just not used on those questionnaires. The interest is for hospital stay dates and surgery names and dates.
For the present HFE version, I am recording “operative interventions” (surgeries) in the Visits > Visit Type > ‘Hospitalization’ because that’s where most doctors/people look for such information and more data may be shown on the MHS. The Treatments category is, to me, more appropriate for recording the potentially longer term therapeutic and preventative procedures like Oxygen Therapy Care, Diabetic injections, physical therapy, etc. Surgeries, even though technically a ‘treatment’, are better associated with hospitalizations. Also, ‘hospitalizations’ should be more generalized to include outpatient surgical facilities in the HFE.
A suggestion for the MHS: consider a program change to remove the word "Hospitalization" under the Visit column(a duplication of the category Hospitalizations) and possibly change the column heading to 'Provider' instead of 'Visit'. I really like the MHS and will offer a few more suggestions in another post.
robert