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Synergy Q & A

Here are a few Questions and Answers gleaned from the Synergy list (see the Lists page). If you have any gems you think should be here, mail me

Q. Can Sophie check for drug sensitivities? If so, how?

A. This can't be done, as far as I know. The workaround is to enter an Adverse Reaction code as well as the sensitivity itself, and then to have the SOPHIE use a $FETCH question to look for the Read code. Clumsy but do-able.

Q. I am having difficulty adding BD microfine 5mm needles. The read code editor has these under ph8A. with a range of keywords (have tried them all). I can find the needles in the drug file editor by using the "predefined" tab on the search box but not by keyword. In clinician, however there is no "predefined" option when looking for medication and the needles never seem to come up on keyword searches. The legal category in DFE is "Appliance" so they should be prescribable. I would be interested to know if this is a problem for everyone or if there is something basic I am missing.

A. In the search medication dialogue box make sure the advance option is ticked and then click on the appliance tree tab click on appliances to expand it and click on hypodermic equipment and then select microfine needles from there. Overall I agree the whole process is a mess and was more elegant on System 6000 although the reason for changing is to get access to bits of multilex data we never saw before. Sadly though finding relatively common appliances is still a black art.

Q. I would be grateful if anyone could tell me how to bypass the preview option for single patient reports printed via the Reports menu on the menu bar. I presume that preview=1 means "show me a preview" Does preview=0 switch this off and send the report straight to the default windows printer?

A: Yes preview=0 or simply miss off preview altogether.

Q. I want to clear everything out of Miquest and start with a clean sheet. I have sucessfully run other queries but the autorejected/pending ones are hanging  around++++ and are resisting every thing I try. Any ideas?

A. With Synergy logged in: Click Start, Click Run, Type "miquest /clean" without the quotes. Miquest should start up with all the old stuff removed.

Q. In the trial system our 4-byte Z codes have not been swapped to 5-byte @Z codes as we expected. We are cleaning up our Z codes prior to the real migration, but we will still have a lot left that have no official equivalent and we will need this swap to avoid conflict with NHS-assigned codes. Has anyone else experienced these problems?

A. We moved from System 6000 to Synergy but had problems with user added Z codes. I though they were going to sort it out. It will only affect 4 byte system 5 practices though so maybe they have not got round to it yet though. All your Z codes need to be moved to @Z codes on Synergy to avoid potential conflicts. I would try to get rid of as many as you can before you change but Torex wrote a bulk swap utility for me so I could swap them all in one go once we were live. You will not be able to edit them and the report manage complains they do not exist. Also they will not have any key words assigned so you will only be able to find them reliably by entering the code direct.

Q. I'm trying to add a note retrospectively, using a report with the output clause Add Note. One of the fields that can be added is Start_Date. Can I make this field contain a variable, or calculated date rather than a constant? Can I, for instance, make it contain the same date as the entry start_date which the report searches on? I tried putting in Entry.Start_Date but it gave a syntax error when it ran. The other thing I need to know is whether I can create an entry under a specific problem heading using a report

A. As far as I know you cannot add a note to a problem title from a report - they all go into unlinked. I think this is mainly to do with the complexity of error trapping that would be needed otherwise - (what happens when there is no problem title?). As to the dates you can add a fixed date i.e. 12/3/2002 or leave it blank and then the default will be today. You may also be able to use -1w for 1 week ago etc but I am pretty sure you cannot relate the date to another field in the report.

Q. A while ago I'm sure someone explained how to delete a BP code (246 series). The solution involved separating it into its component parts or somehow manipulating it before deleting. I cannot remember how, could someone remind me (my new sophie has put an incorrect entry in, I've fixed this but want to delete the entry)

A. If you go into the Menu "View" then option "Settings" and pick the tab "Miscellaneous" there is a box " Edit notes using the observation dialogs". If you untick this box, you can then edit a BP code fully as before. If that doesn't work, go to "T" and delete .269A (diastolic code) then .2699 (systolic code) and finally .246 (BP reading code) in that order.

Tips and Hints section

• If you type a number in the applies from date and then TAB the date will complete itself with the current month and year. e.g. 22 and TAB yields 22/11/02. Also -1d, -1w or -1y will give one day, one week and 1 year ago respectively. 1w, 1m or 1y will give future.
• Right-click a lab result and select GPP links. This shows you the result as it was when it was in the day-book (even if it is no longer in the day-book). It gives a kind of read-only view; you can't annotate, post, re-assign or do anything but view the results. It means you can post your results into Clinician without the reams of comments, thus keeping the screens uncluttered, yet still have access to the full information as it came from the lab via this day-book view.