Encounters

Encounters are used to define and group data added during a consultation, for example, acute medication, diagnosis and symptoms are contained together within one encounter.

This makes it easy to see what was recorded during current and previous patient consultations.

Points to note:

• To add data to the patient record, you must first start an encounter, otherwise the patient record is view only, with the exception of issuing medication.
• When starting an encounter, you need to select the type of encounter you are having with the patient, for example, Surgery Consultation, Home Visit.
• You must remember to close an encounter when you have finished adding data to enable the data to be written back to your clinical system, for example, Vision 3.
• Encounters that are left open for 90 days, or encounters that are closed but your device has not connected to the internet for 90 days automatically delete.
• Open encounters are saved locally on your device and cannot be accessed from any other setting.
  
• You can see a list of all previous encounters by selecting the Encounters menu from the Patient Summary screen.

If you leave the patient record without saving the encounter, you are warned that the encounter is still open.

If you select Continue and do not close the encounter, the patient's name is added to Open Encounters on the Vision Anywhere Home screen.

From Open Encounters, you can select the patient's details to reopen their summary and return to your consultation.

The Patient Summary screen displays the last encounter.

To see all previous encounters:

• Select Encounter in the Tab bar at the bottom of the screen and a list of all Encounters displays. Swipe the screen to see more.

The Encounter list can be filtered by date, see Viewing a Record for details.

To add data to a patient record, you must first start an Encounter.

Encounters must be saved for the data to write back to the patient record.

An Encounter can be left open while you navigate to other screens, but you must remember to close the encounter within 90 days, or it is deleted.

To open an Encounter:

1. Select a patient and the patient record opens on the Patient Summary screen.
2. Select Add to open a new encounter.
3. Select an appropriate encounter type from the list:

   • Acute Visit - Selected by default.

   • Clinic

   • Emergency consultation

   • Follow-up/routine visit

   • Home visit

   • Medication Management Event

   • Nursing home visit

   • Other

   • Residential home visit

   • Surgery Consultation

   • Telephone call from a patient

   • Telephone call to a patient

   • Third party consultation

4. Record the consultation.
5. When finished, select Done to close the Encounter.

The data recorded in the Encounter is sent back to the patient's clinical system.

To close an Encounter select Done .

The data recorded in the Encounter is sent back to the patient's clinical system, as long as you are connected to the internet.

You can only delete previous encounters if they have not been closed and synchronised with the patient record, ie if you have opened it from the saved encounter list or you want to delete the current encounter you are working on.

To delete an encounter:

1. From the Current Encounter screen select Delete .
2. You are prompted that deleting the encounter also deletes everything that has been added to it.
3. Select Yes.
4. The encounter is now removed from Vision Anywhere.