[Gnumed-devel] Test results imports, and encounters

[Jim Busser]

When a daemon / importer etc would, in one process, import many- 
results-per-patient, how would this be recorded in the database in  
terms of encounters and how would / should these be shown in the EMR  
tree?

In asking the question, I am setting aside that the component tests  
may individually relate to different health issues... I am only (at  
the earlier stage of import) wondering:

- even if a patient has an open encounter "in praxis", the import  
would not be recorded as having been part of the same encounter,  
would it? After all, the encounter may still be open at a time when  
the visit has been concluded and the patient has departed and the  
doctor is no longer interacting with a gnumed client

- would each import process create a single per-patient encounter  
which may be of type "results <importer>" and could this encounter be  
permitted to have a start datetime and an end datetime that falls  
inside the time frame of an already-open encounter? The logic would  
just recognize any existence of a still-open patient encounter and,  
in this situation, would auto-close the newly-added results  
encounter? If there was no already-open encounter, perhaps imports  
would still be auto-closed? Maybe any clinician review (at a time  
when there was no open encounter) could still be a new encounter of  
type "chart review" ?

- how would such "results <importer>" be handled in the EMR tree?  
Would there exist, under "Unattributed episodes", an episode  
"Results" with the various closed encounters listed within? Over  
time, that would be a lot of results, but maybe even for "active"  
patients there might be only one record per week, 50 per year inside  
such a folder. The alternative would be to allow test results import  
to be entered (stored) under a special encounter type that simply  
adds more and more datetime stamped administrative soap rows although  
maybe there is a downside to doing this?