Merge Clinical Lists

Before you begin

When Recalls (for example) are recorded, you can enter a customised term or description of the Recall reason, as opposed to using the terms/descriptions supplied with Clinical. In Clinical there are numerous lists like this that you can add customised terms to.

A caveat of using customised terms is that records associated with them might not appear in the results of searches you conduct. For example, if you had entered a customised Recall reason of URGENT RESULT, and you conduct a Recall search using the supplied criteria of 'URGENT TEST RESULT', any record that use your customised reason will not appear in the search results. To account for this, the Merge Clinical Lists utility allows you to easily search for and replace customised entries with those supplied with Clinical.

To use the Merge Clinical Lists utility:

Procedure

  1. Locate and double-click the MedicalDirector Maintenance icon on your desktop. The MedicalDirector > Maintenance window appears.
  2. Select the Database Tasks > Clinical menu item.
  3. Double-click Merge Clinical Lists. (Optional) If this is the first time you have tried to run the Merge Clinical Lists utility during this session of working in MedicalDirector Maintenance, you will be prompted to select a Configuration, and enter your Username and Password.
  4. The Merge Clinical Lists window appears.
  5. Via the Show Clinical List for drop-down menu, select the list you want to manage. In the example above, the Address Book Categories list has been selected. Once you have selected a list to manage, its two associated lists of category terms becomes populated with data.
    • The right-hand side of this window displays the total of all supplied and customised categories associated with the clinical list selected (in the example above, the 'Address Book Categories' list).
    • The left-hand side of this window displays the total of all supplied and customised categories, that have actually been used in your database. The example above indicates that a category called 'Dental' (which in this case happens to be a customised category created by a user) has been applied to an addressee recorded in Clinical's Address Book. Although you may add numerous customised categories to Clinical, they will not appear in this left-hand list until you actually associate them with a record in Clinical. Note also that you cannot add, edit or delete customised categories from this window: Address Book categories are managed from within MedicalDirector Clinical via Tools > Options > Lists, and Recall categories are managed via Tools > Options > Recalls.
  6. In the example above, we want to replace all instances of the term 'Dental' (the customised category term one of our users created) with the term 'Dentist' (the pre-defined term supplied with Clinical).
    • Within the left-hand list of items, locate and select the entry you want to merge (Dental).
    • Within the right-hand list of items, locate and select the entry you want to replace the customised entry with (Dentist).

  7. Click Change. You will be prompted to confirm this action. A search of your database is conducted, and wherever there is an instance of the category term 'Dental' used, it is replaced with the category term 'Dentist'. Confirmation and details of the successful replacement will appear in the Status text box, as shown following.

    Notice in the example above that the original term 'Dental' is still listed on the right-hand side of the window. Although the Merge Clinical Lists utility conducts a search of the records in your database for the term 'Dental' and replaces it with the term 'Dentist', it does not remove 'Dental' from the list of terms available for you to select from in future, unless you manually delete it from the list via Tools > Options > Lists (in MedicalDirector Clinical).
  8. Click OK to exit the Merge Clinical Lists utility.

Results

What to do next

Note:
Although you may have used this utility to replace your customised category terms with those supplied with Clinical, the replacement happens at a database-level only. In other words (using the example above), although records in your database that previously used the category term 'Dental' now use the category term 'Dentist', the term 'Dental' has not been removed from your list of customsied category terms. Subsequently, users can continue to use the term. If your intention is to remove a term such that it cannot be used in future, this must be performed from within Clinical itself;
  • Address Book categories are managed from within Clinical via Tools > Options > Lists
  • Recall categories are managed via Tools > Options > Recalls.