Version Development

New and Improved Features:

You will be installing ALL prior releases that have been posted since your current program version. Therefore, use the "View All Updates" link (above) to review ALL of the releases that may affect you. Your current program version appears at the top of your Ascend-IP screen (in "yyyymmddhhmm" format).

Reports: A new "IV to PO Conversion" report. The report is intended to simplify a common pharmacy drug utilization screening process. The report only lists patient's active IV orders IF the patient is also on an active PO or NG route order. The report includes a "Dear Doctor" section which can be manually completed by the reporting pharmacist.

Reports: A new "Charges Screening" report includes orders/charges that may require further review and action. Criteria for the report include any (a) daily charge/credit quantities greater than "9", (b) patients with no billing account number and (c) charges with no charge code.

Order entry: High quantity warning During order entry, if the user edits an ingredient "quantity", "dose" or "per" field and this results in a "quantity per ingredient" value greater than "9", a warning is issued when the user attempts to finish the order.

Charge/Credit entries: High charge value warning. All areas of the program where charges/ credits may be entered have standardized screening as follows: If the manually entered value is greater than 9 or less than -9, a warning is issued, "Are you sure you want to charge for <nnn> doses? <Ok> <Cancel>". The default is the <Cancel> option which will redirect the user to re-enter the charge/credit value again.

Floor stock lists: (1) Floor stock lists now include both formulary drug descriptions (typically, generic and brand names) (2) When creating/editing a FS list (Utilities-->Floor stock lists), the formulary selection list will include drug descriptions #1, #2 and mnemonic in alpha order, making item selection more flexible. Once an item is selected, the floor stock list will display the selection with drug description #1 in column 1, and drug description #2 in column 2. Later on, when the user wants to enter floor stock charges (i.e., using the "Charges" menu-->Enter floor stock charges) the floor stock lists will also show both names for easier cross referencing.

Allergies (ADT screen): If the user selects "NKA", but other allergies are already listed, the program displays an option box: "All other allergies will be deleted <Ok> <Cancel>". If the user selects <Ok> (the default), AIP deletes all patient allergies except "NKA". If <Cancel> is selected, "NKA" is removed from the patient's allergies list.

Clinical Review Pop-up reminder: If the user selects a clinical review from the pop-up list within an order, and then marks that review as "complete", the popup box will close automatically if there are no more clinical reviews listed.

ER/Misc Charges (Charges menu): A new column displaying the patient's "Previous room/bed" has been added to the patient selection list for your reference.

Order description on profile: After an order has been entered, if someone edits the primary order ingredient (i.e., selects a new drug, edits the description, changes the quantity or dosage values), the program can now update the Order Description that appears on the profile summary screen.

Utilities menu: "Options" --> "Administration times": The 'SIG code' fields can now be assigned a corresponding 'full description' that is substituted automatically at order entry time. This is intended to be a medication safety feature which eliminates the use of "codes" on labels and MARs. Examples: (1) In the Administration Times table, a 'Sig code' of "BID" could be assigned a 'full description' of "twice daily". At order entry time, if you enter a Sig of "take 2 tablets bid by mouth", the program will change this to "Take 2 tablets twice daily by mouth" as the program schedules the order. (2) A Sig code of "Q6H" could be assigned a full description of "every six hours". At order entry time, if the you enter a Sig of "give by IVPB Q6H x 10 days", the program will change this to "Give by IVPB every six hours x 10 days" when the order is scheduled. Optionally, the user may enter or edit the 'full description' and the program will recognize them the same way it does Sig codes. For example, a user could enter a Sig containing a 'full description' of "Every six hours" and the program will schedule it the same way as if they had entered a Sig code "Q6H". 'Full descriptions' should be entered in all upper case, or all lower case, (including the first letter) for maximum automatic formatting flexibility.

"Utilities" menu-->Options--> MAR: A new option allows you to force both drug descriptions to appear on the MAR for all items in the formulary. This optionally provides a system-wide over-ride to the same option found in each formulary record. Don't apply this system-wide option if you want both descriptions to be displayed for some drugs, but not for others.

Corrections:

Note: Many of the corrections listed below were made in a previous version, but were not documented until the release of this version.

During the "Verify Orders" process, if the pharmacist modified the SIG, the order would end up as "inactive" once again and would reappear on the order verification screen. This has been fixed.

Errors that occurred during order rewrites containing a deleted ingredient, and with certain changes in "dosage/strength/per" fields, have been fixed.

ADT screen: the "Full Born" [Yes/No/Unknown] dropdown did not let you pick anything. This has been fixed.

Auto log off function: An "Invalid use of null" error has been fixed. We also clarified the unit of measure as "minutes" (e.g., "Logoff after [ ] minutes").

"Clinical" menu-->"Clinical Reviews"-->"Add Order Related (or Patient Related) clinical review": the error # 3265 which occurred if no reviews had already been entered, has been fixed.

Room list (Utilities menu): The error # 3021 that occurred if you tried to move a new record has been fixed.

Reports: The error # 3146 (query timeout) that sometimes occurred while printing large reports has been fixed.

Duplicate therapy checking: Exclusion based on formulary setting is now working properly again.

"Order Type" and "Order Information" reports: no longer includes discharged patients' orders if the "Active Orders" report filter is applied.