"Get Last Patient" sometimes get the previous patient instead of the patient I am working on. I haven't figure out when it will do that, yesterday the two patients both had first name "Mary" and Synapse kept pulling the wrong Mary, I had to close Add Result Window and open again to get the correct patient. Is it because of the name? When I reopen Synapse and leave only one Mary in the Cache list, no more mistakes. How about make it simpler: just keep the current patient's name in Add Result Window until it's closed?
This seems like a good idea but it isn't. The number of misfiled items skyrockets when you don't have to choose a patient each time. I've seen it happen. Considering choosing a patient is accomplishable in under 1 second, often much less, the time saved is definitely not worth it. I'd say a better move would be to get rid of the "Get Last Patient" button. Synapse does a superb job of selecting patients and this should be leveraged, not minimized. [F3] first two letters of first name [space] first two letters of last name. (well under 1/2 second for me). When synapse is "perfected"(TM) and we need to shave off 1/2 second we can think of other ways. But what is the cost of misfiled items ? (could be alot).
I actually misfiled yesterday using "Get Last Patient" button when I was filing a real thick old chart myself. This would have been avoided if the patient name stayed and didn't disappear after import. It's definately less likely for me to misfile to keep the current patient name until I hit [F3] (or a "change current patient" button), than clicking "Get Last Patient", assuming I am getting the current patient but Synapse pulled a different one. Another way to avoid misfiling would be to close the "Add Result Window" automatically after import. But Graham leaves it open for the convenience of continuously adding multiple results.
Re: "Get Last Patient" mistake Problem #1 - Filing yourself ? I guess it's OK for the short term but it's time consuming. I'd never do it myself. I've never used the Get Last Patient button, I'll ask my secretary. Problem #2 - Batch filing old patient records vs. Day to Day scan stuff as they come in. (these ideally have different solutions). Batch filing keeps the current patient and Day to Day Scanning requires patient to be selected for each new result. If you did one patient at a time (no other patient records in the scan directory) and *IF* hitting the close button would automatically (1) turn off the keep current patient flag and (2) require a new patient to be selected, this would be a safe method. Yes that would work.I would say that if your secretary (or the filer) got into the habbit of using a "keep current patient" setting for day to day scanning (say for 2 items for the same person), the number of misfiled items would increase.
Re: "Get Last Patient" mistake The original behaviour was to keep the patient name there, but it was changed at Jason's request because of misfiling errors. I had to agree as I had a few misfiling errors myself. You can always use the cache on the main window to pick out a patient's name .. and this can be kept visible. One is always going to have misfiling errors, but since this is double entry ( it appears in someone's inbox who can also check it ), the problem is mitigated.
