Edit Patient Information in Partner Notjane

When you need to edit patient information, you can use the Demographics section of a patient’s chart, or the Patient Check-In tool.

You can also use the Partner interface to edit patients.

Read the sections below to learn about the Patient Editor (notjane). You can run notjane to add a new patient to Partner, edit demographics, research visit history, and more.

Patients and Accounts: In PCC, medical records, procedures, and diagnoses are part of the patient chart. Charges and billing history, on the other hand, belong to an account. In PCC EHR, you’ll see account information listed for a patient and you can change a patient’s billing and custodian accounts. In Partner, you’ll edit patient information in the Patient Editor (notjane) and account information in the Family Editor (fame).

Quickstart: Edit a Patient in Partner

Follow the procedure below to learn the basics of the Patient Editor, notjane.

In the procedure above, you ran notjane and made a small change to a patient’s basic information. In the next sections, you will learn about each of the pages in the notjane program.

Basic Patient Demographics in Partner (Page 1)

On the first page of notjane, the demographics screen, you can view and change basic information about the patient. You can also change the custodian and/or guarantor account for the patient and run two very useful patient reports (imms and patinfo).

Press Enter or Tab to move from field to field and fill out any of the basic information. Partner will automatically capitalize names for you and enter dashes (–) in the phone numbers if you do not. You can write the birth date in a condensed format, such as “082401” for August 24th, 2001, and Partner will expand the date for you and calculate the patient’s age automatically.

Look-Up Fields: In all Partner programs, some fields have a list of possible answers from which you can pick. You can type anything you want into a name field or address field, but the “Physician” field can only be filled with a provider from your practice. To see a list of possible answers in a “Look-Up” field, type an asterisk (*) and press Enter.

The primary care “Physician” field and the “Status” field are both look-up fields:

Status Flags: The “Status” field is not like other fields. Statuses are used to “flag” or classify patients. You can put several different status flags on a patient, separated by commas. A patient might have “Needs Extra Time” and “Diabetic” status flags. You can use an “Inactive” flag to indicate that a patient no longer visits your office. Your office can run reports to see all the patients that have a particular status. The status flags show up in the scheduler and elsewhere in Partner so your office will always know if there are any special circumstances surrounding a patient.

Four "Extra Information" Fields: There are four fields in the middle of the screen which are customizable. Your practice might use these fields to store additional contact information, nicknames, or important dates.

Guarantor and Custodian: In the middle of the screen, you will see either one or two account. If the same account is both the guarantor and custodian for this patient, one account will appear in the center of the screen:

If one account is the guarantor and a different account is the custodian, two accounts will appear:

When two accounts are shown, the account on the left is the custodian account and the account on the right is the guarantor account.

What is a guarantor, what is a custodian?: The custodian is the patient’s care-giver and physical address. The guarantor is the bill payer. During the time an individual is a patient at your practice, the guarantor and custodian may change or even switch places! Press F4 – Reassign Account to make changes.

Deceased Patient Status in the Practice Management Patient Editor

You can review and set a patient’s Deceased status in the Patient Editor (notjane).

Wherever the patient’s age appears in Partner, it will be replaced with the Deceased indicator.

Deceased Flag: As shown above, the Deceased status automatically adds a status flag to the patient’s record. You can use that status flag to include or exclude the patient from reports or the Patient Recaller. If you add or remove the status flag, it will also change the patient’s Deceased status.

As with queues in PCC EHR, Partner’s patient lists will display the deceased status in place of the patient’s calculated age.

Function Keys on the First Demographics Page

Additional Demographics in Partner (Page 2)

The second page of notjane contains ethnicity and race, language, and confidential communication preferences.

Use the Enter and Backspace keys to move among the fields and make changes. Press End to erase the text after the cursor.

In some fields, you can use an asterisk (*) to get a list of possible choices.

You may only select a single Confidential Communication Preference. Once selected, fields particular for that selection will appear.

For example, if the patient has a private address distinct from their parents, you can select Mailing Address and enter that new address.

Why Track This Information?: Race and ethnicity, language, and confidential communication preferences help your practice in several ways.

• You can use the communication preferences to work directly with patients on confidential issues or on the maintenance of medical concerns that are their own responsibility.
• You can use any of these fields on form letters.
• You can limit some SRS reports by these fields.
• You can use the Patient Recaller (recaller) to calculate patient population numbers, generate patient lists, or generate mailings for a certain demographic based on a set of criteria.
• These fields are related to both PCMH and the EHR Medicaid Incentive Program.

Ethnicity, Race, and Language Lists: The Ethnicity, Race, and Language fields are limited to values accepted by national standards. You may enter more than one race by using a comma between entries.

Configuration Options: These fields appear in both the Patient Editor (notjane) and Patient Checkin (checkin). You can use the Configuration Editor (ced) to hide the Confidential Communication Preferences from checkin if your office does not collect this information and the fields distract from your checkin workflow.

Edit Major Diagnoses and Allergies in Partner (Page 3)

The third page of the Patient Editor (notjane) contains a list of major diagnoses and allergies for the patient, based on billed visits, and a summary of appointment information.

Pre-ICD-10 and Pre-EHR: The Major Diagnoses and Allergies lists in the Patient Editor (notjane) were designed to work with ICD-9, prior to the implementation of EHR technology. Your practice may continue to use these lists, but they do not work with electronic chart records or the ICD-10 coding system. For more information, read the ICD-10 Transition notes below.

Major Diagnoses and Allergies: You can enter major diagnoses and allergies manually using the ICD-9 diagnoses in the Diagnosis table in the Table Editor (ted. Only diagnoses that are marked as “Major” or “Allergy” in the Partner diagnosis table can appear on these lists.

Appointment Information: Partner lists the next three scheduled appointments for the patient. You can also see the total number of appointments, the total number of appointments missed and canceled, and an explanation of what visits were most recently missed and canceled. All of this information is maintained automatically by Partner and can not be edited.

More Diagnoses and Procedure Information: For a detailed history of the procedures and diagnoses of this patient, press F5 – Patient History to run the patinfo program.

ICD-10 Transition Notes for Partner’s Major Diagnoses and Allergies Lists

For many years, the Partner Practice Management system offered some basic clinical tracking features using ICD-9 diagnosis codes. The Patient Editor (notjane) includes Major Diagnoses and Allergies lists, which were updated automatically from billed diagnoses. These lists could then appear when scheduling, on paper encounter forms, form letters, and in the Partner Phone Encounter Notes (pen) program.

The Major Diagnoses and Allergies lists depend on features specific to the ICD-9 billing codes table in Partner. They can not automatically populate from the ICD-10 billing code set.

Will the Transition to ICD-10 Remove Patient Major Diagnoses and Allergies?

PCC will not erase or remove any ICD-9 data tracked in the Major Diagnoses and Allergies lists or elsewhere in Partner or PCC EHR. Your practice can continue to review the Major Diagnoses and Allergies lists, add ICD-9 codes to them, and use them in various programs.

Since all billing now uses ICD-10, the patient lists will no longer automatically update based on billed charges. A patient’s ICD-9 Major Diagnoses and Allergies lists will become less and less useful over time, and the ICD-9 code set will not be updated or supported. You can continue updating a patient’s lists manually, or discontinue their use.

As they will become less accurate over time, PCC recommends that you remove the Major Diagnoses and Allergies lists from your scheduling screen and paper forms. The patient’s chart in PCC EHR includes a Problem List and Allergy list which can replace some features of Partner’s Major Diagnoses and Allergies features, and reports and the Patient Recaller can use billed ICD-9 and ICD-10 diagnoses as criteria.

If your practice uses the Major Diagnoses and Allergies lists, PCC Support can help you find alternative solutions. For example, many practices have found that using patient flags to inform physicians and staff about a patient’s status can work better than relying on the Major Diagnoses list. Contact PCC Support to discuss your options.

Edit Patient Notes in Partner (Page 4)

The final page of the notjane is the Patient Notes screen. You can store important information and records of interactions with the patient.

Press F4 – Post New Note to begin adding a new note. You will see a text editor window for adding your note:

While typing your note, you can use the various function keys in the text editor to make changes. After typing your note, press F1 – Save & Quit. Press F12 to cancel.

Learn More About Notes: The notes screen is the same in both the Family and Patient Editors. It includes a follow-up note feature, a search field, and many other features to help you track important information about the patient or family. To learn about these features, read Structured Notes.