Re: [Gnumed-devel] clinicians: coding use case survey - please respond !

[Karsten Hilbert]

On Tue, May 03, 2011 at 08:48:26AM -0700, Jim Busser wrote:

> 1) for each code there should hopefully exist in GNUmed a
> "reference description" no matter that the clinician has
> substituted in the episode naming something more
> clinically-friendly or informative

Sure. GNUmed carries the full reference information from the
coding system sources regardless of their use or disuse
among individual patient records.

> 2) when the description is being edited, I would suggest
> (at minimum) that the "reference description" has already
> been queried and be made available (visible) in the same
> editing window

Sure.

> 3) the same editing window as permits the description to
>    be altered should also permit the ICD etc to be altered

The association of *this* description with codes, that is,
or else it wouldn't be consistent with your expectations.

> > #--------------------------------------------------------
> > Patient A has health issue "COPD". Patient B also has
> > health issue "COPD".
> > 
> > I would expect to be able to link *different* ICD codes to
> > each health issue *despite* that the two issues have the
> > very same name:
> > 
> >     yes
> >     comment
> 
> Because the codes could have varying levels of precision that may better 
> apply despite that the description may not show the difference.
> e.g. hypertension there are many different forms & the user might not bother 
> to make the description granular.

It might be worth a thought to provoke the user to suitable
adjust the description when they want to link a slightly
different set of codes to it  *evil grin*

> This reminds me though… it may be helpful to allow the ICD reference 
> description to default / overwrite an empty description or even a populated 
> description

The episode.description cannot be empty:

        "sane_description" CHECK (gm.is_null_or_blank_string(description) IS 
FALSE)

(a database level constraint)

Karsten
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