Recall system

[drtech]

I am having problems getting the recall system to work correctly.

I have my initial reminder set to 15 days and the 2nd and more reminder delay time to 30 days. I am testing the system by putting my recall due date for today. I show up in the recall list. If I enter a note and then it goes into the recall comm log (to trigger 1 attempt), I dissapear from the list. Working correctly so far.

If I reset the date for 16 days in the future, or even 31 days, or even a year in the future, I still don't appear on the list. The disable until a certain date field is blank, But I dont reappear until I delete the commlog entry. I think there is a bug in the logic keeping this from working.

Also, I don't know if this is in the logic or not, but does the "disable until a certain day" override the scheduled appearances triggered by the comm log entries? How do the stages reset? Example: You want a patient to reappear in 7 days to re-establish contact, but you are on your 3rd reminder stage. Will it appear in 7 days or be kept out for the full 30 days set in the defaults?

[jordansparks]

Your test is just wrong. The second attempt is how many days measured from the previous attempt. So a better test would be to put the recall due date at various times in the past. And to also put the reminders at various times in the past.

As to your last question, you don't pick the interval on a patient by patient basis. It will be kept out for the full 30 days. If you really want to contact someone very soon, then put the appointment on the unscheduled list. It seems like a rare situation. You don't want the staff to have to think about it.

[drtech]

so is it calculating what to show based on 15/30 days from TODAY or from the paramaters set in what to show in the recall list? To clarify, I reset the dates to show in the recall list to 31 days in the future and even 1 year in the future and I still didn't show up. Still not quite sure it is working right unless it is calculating the reminders at a point from today's date, then only a past date would work in a test. Is that what you mean?

So the other thing I think we need is a place that shows when they are going to reappear in the recall list. Now you have no way of seeing that when a patient has a recall commlog and is no longer appearing on the due date. I think that would be a simple addition of showing the date with the other recall info? Something like: "Patient will appear next in the recall list on: 12/15/2009" What do you think?

[SmilingPatient]

Slightly off topic, but wanted to help if you are interested.

Best recall system by far for us has been outsourcing it to PLZ. www.justsayplz.com. Feel free to call our office with any questions... just peruse their website. It's superior to anything that PMSs have, by far.

I'm switching to OD from PracticeWorks on Jan1 and absolutely nothing about our recall system will change. Our patients will continue to get high quality email, text, and postcards at specific intervals. It's all in real-time as the system culls the data every 10 minutes.

FYI, I get nothing for referring and have no business interest in PLZ. Just extremely satisfied user.

[enamelrod]

alex they are a good company and its great to see they have expandd since when i used lighthouse

[jordansparks]

Well, you were right. I just posted it as a bug fix to use the chosen date range rather than today's date. It shouldn't affect ordinary offices doing recall. It was more of an inability to test that the system was working as expected.

[drtech]

great...thanks for the correction, I will try it out...

what do you think:

So the other thing I think we need is a place that shows when they are going to reappear in the recall list. Now you have no way of seeing that when a patient has a recall commlog and is no longer appearing on the due date. I think that would be a simple addition of showing the date with the other recall info? Something like: "Patient will appear next in the recall list on: 12/15/2009" What do you think?

[jordansparks]

Of course the "fix" is causing problems in real offices. Patients are now difficult to get off the list in certain offices. Even after they've been reminded today, they still show on the list because the office is viewing a recall date range of patients who are due farther in the future. I think we should go back to:
if ( (lastReminderDate + reminderInterval) < todayDate)
instead of
if ( (lastReminderDate + reminderInterval) < maxDateInRangeFilter)

The only reason you needed the second option to work was when you were doing hypothetical tests. Dental offices are not hypothetical. Any test should only reflect real-world possibilities. A better test would have been to use historical dates for lastReminderDate instead of future dates for maxDateInRangeFilter.

I have an example with real numbers. Let's say the date range in the recall list is always set to show 7 days into the future. And let's say the "show if # of days since initial reminder" is set to 15 days. The patient will pop back up on the list in 8 days, and they will be called 7 days too early for the 2nd reminder.

[drtech]

well, if the logic causes problems with the "fix" then better change it back if you think in the real world it isn't a problem.

And I just started a new thread with another problem when e-mail address are incorrectly entered....

[jordansparks]

As you can see in another thread, even the starting date in the range was causing a different problem. We have to ignore the date range entirely, and only compare with Date.Today. That change has been posted.