A patient’s Chief Complaint can be documented when scheduling an appointment and/or when working in an encounter. An appointment’s chief complaint will populate the encounter chief complaint section, when the patient checks in for their appointment where an encounter is configured to automatically create upon checkin. Chief Complaints on appointments and/or encounters are reportable and visible throughout the system.
Appointment Chief Complaint
When scheduling (adding) an appointment and/or editing an appointment, one can signify a Chief Complaint in the free text field.
Visibility to Appointment Chief Complaint
When the appointment is saved, the Chief Complaint will display on the various Scheduler views such as List View, Multi View and Week View.
The appointment chief complaint is visible from the Appointments chart tab listing of waitlist appointments, pending appointments, and past appointments.
Another place where there is visibility to the appointment Chief Complaint is from the Appointments portlet found in the chart’s Summary dashboard tab.
Lastly, an appointment’s chief complaint is visible as the appointment reason when utilizing the Schedule portlet found within the Quick View sidemenu dashboard.
Chief Complaint Encounter Section
Within an encounter, there is a Chief Complaint section that can be utilized. The Chief Complaint contents will prepopulate with the linked appointment Chief Complaint details (if the encounter were generated automatically from the checked in appointment).
The encounter Chief Complaint can be updated or edited. If an edit is made, it does not reflect back onto the linked appointment, it is simply reflective within the encounter and encounter document.
Chief Complaint Protocol
Protocols (primary and additional protocols) can be configured to be selected and utilized within the Chief Complaint encounter section. Please see separate guide Encounter Protocols for detailed information.
Visibility to Encounter Chief Complaint
An encounter’s chief complaint is visible as a column within the Encounters chart tab listing which is a datavis listing.
There is an optional system setting that can be disabled system wide to omit the Chief Complaint column from the Encounters chart tab listing. Otherwise, the Encounters listing is a datavis which users can make their own perspectives for as needed.
An encounter’s chief complaint is also visible within the Encounter’s Properties as a column within the Encounter Revisions datavis listing.
Once an encounter has been closed & archived, the encounter is made into a document that is stored and can be shared. The encounter’s chief complaint (within a stored document) is also visible within the Documents listing as the Subject when looking at a list of stored documents.
There is a system setting for List View that sets the encounter’s chief complaint as the stored document’s subject.
Reporting
There are several standard reports and dashboards that may output the Chief Complaint from an encounter or appointment.
Example of Encounters reporting dashboards output:
