Anesthesia Module

[savvy]

I'm in a seven story medical building equipped with a central oxygen/nitrous oxide system.
Tank room that has 4 nitrous tanks and 8 oxygen tanks.
Plumbed to dental offices throughout the building.
Each office knows how much gas they use, but has know idea how much there is to begin with.
The system has an automatic shut down if O2 pressure gets too low.
There are three "new tanks" deliveries each week.
Deliveries are usually not the same...one might be 3 oxy tanks and 1 nitrous tank, or could be 5 oxy tanks and 0 nitrous tanks.
So my question.....

When setting up the "anesthetics", in my case there are only two (O2 & N2O2), what would you recommend I place in the "Quantity On Hand" box?

[wjstarck]

Interesting...I'll have to give that some thought.

The inventory system is currently designed to decrement a known initial quantity with known quantities given during ananesthetic. With med gases that is of course a bit more difficult. The form is very busy as it is and not quite a perfect facsimile of a real medical anesthetic record as it is not designed to track quantities of med gas per unit time.

Tell me what you're after ultimately - do you want a way to track about how much you give in Liters for cost sharing, medicolegal reasons, or abuse monitoring? Are you interested in those figures for just nitrous or nitrous and O2?

[savvy]

Thanks for the reply.

Initially, I'd like to keep a record of O2 and N2O2 for use per patient in chart. (currently we write x minutes of at y l/ml O2: z l/ml ie: 40 min O2 3:N2O2 3 )

We log # minutes used in a notebook, tally the total minutes used and submit that number to our building gas manager. The manager totals the number of minutes reported by each office, divides that into the total monthly gas bill to determine cost of gas per minute, then multiplies that factor w/ each office reported minutes to determine each office's monthly cost share. Of course it is all on the honor system. It comes out to be close to $1/min. We've been doing it this way for over 30 years.

Ideally, I'd like a to:
-keep a patient chart record (cool factor and medicolegal)
-get a report of amount of O2 and N2O2 used per month (cost sharing)
-tie a patient charge for use based on (L/min)($)...currently we just bill flat rate charge of $65....many times we don't bill at all.

Thanks for asking.
Cheers!!!

[wjstarck]

I'm thinking of keeping track of the L/min by adding a (hidden) timestamp that is generated whenever the dropdown is changed. Then, when the anesthetic close button is clicked, the total L/min for N2O and O2 for the case would then be displayed, as well as the average L/min. This is an excellent suggestion, btw, especially for medicolegal purposes.

I don't think there is any point in adding N2O or O2 tanks into inventory, since you share them I don't see that this has much use.

[savvy]

That was my conclusion.

In that case, maybe you can give advice....
After I open the Anesth. Mod in patient's chart, and answer q's, I am not able to SAVE.
Only the CANCEL box is available to select.

[wjstarck]

You need to click "New" under IV Anesthetics towards the upper left hand corner of the Anesthetic Record form to create a new record for today's date

[savvy]

Got it!
Thanks!!!

Cheers!!!!

[savvy]

It would be great if, for those of us that just use nitrous sedation, that the fields not related to the gas be able to switch off.
Perhaps also a line item notation on the chart indicating anesthesia used.

.02

cheers!!