At the time of writing PracSoft has an import utility for Rx Medical DOS, Medical Director and HIC previous patients data. Most pathology companies will provide patient demographic data that can be easily imported into Medical Director. From here it is a simple matter to import these details to PracSoft.
You'll find the patient demographic import utility on the latest PracSoft March 2000 CD. Click Start - Programs - PracSoft - Demographic Import Utility.
If you have more than one source of patient demographic data, it is important to think through the best strategy for importing this data.
Following we offer points for your consideration.
The advantage of importing from Medical Director is:
PracSoft stores the Medical Director UR_No field. The correct working of PracSoft and Medical Director together depends on the synchronising of this UR number with the Medical Director data. The advantage of importing from Medical Director is that the databases will be synchronised without any further action needed.
Possible disadvantages of importing data from Medical Director are:
- Data may be out of date or incomplete;
- No family or Payer linking information will exist;
- Often some critical fields, such as numerical Chart No., will be missing.
NB: It should be noted when discussing importing data from Medical Director that Medical Director staff have much experience with importing data from other systems. To consider all your options you may need to discuss this with Medical Director staff.
Possible advantage of using other data sources:
Perhaps the patient information would be more complete – this depends upon how conscientious your practice staff has been in maintaining patient information at the front desk.
