Custom Requisition Support

One of my colleagues provided the client with a very nice customer requisition creator:

• a database which holds practices and maps practices to their favourite assays;
• a UI to maintain the database;
• a formatter to put the custom information onto requistion forms

The customized requisitions were a huge hit with the providers, but not with the phlebotomists: the providers get an easy way to order just what they want to order but the phlebotomists get order forms which vary widely, making entering those forms into the computer harder than they would like.

In order to better support draw station operations, I upgraded our draw station software to accept the practice ID as part of the patient greeting process. This allows the draw station app to put up a web page which matches the paper requisition in the phlebotomist's hand.

So if they want to order the test which is the fourth box on the second row on the paper, they click on the fourth box on the second row of the screen.

Since the draw station procedure is to highlight the assays with a yellow marker as the assays are entered, to ensure entry accuracy, I mimic that on the screen: when a box is checked off, that assay has a yellow background.

The feedback was immediate and positive: the users who are not that comfortable with computers were instantly comforted by the close corelation of the physical and virtual.