This example is based on how discharge text data is formatted in the MEDITECH MAGIC Data Repository (DR).

In the continuing saga of trying to recreate patient discharge instructions from the DR, I discovered that among the complications is detecting where line breaks should actually go.

This is a small tip, but could be quite useful on the days you need it.

Particularly when you work with MEDITECH 6.x PCS data, you will often encounter query response values that look like this:

{|||,30+3/40 Emergency|||||LSCS|Apgar 4/1 7/5}

As you’re learning SQL, you will invariably come across the TOP X clause to a SELECT, which allows you to get – for example – the first 50 rows of a query:

SELECT TOP 50 ADV.VisitID FROM livedb.dbo.AdmVisits ADV ;

This can be quite handy for testing if tables are populated, or just grabbing some records to review when you’re looking for something. And if you’re an old, grizzled, MEDITECH NPR programmer (as many of our followers are), you’ll be happy to see something that acts like Z.record.limit.

However...

One of the challenges of DR-based report development is the same as for NPR or RD … where is the data you want stored? One way to find out is to go into MEDITECH and find the field, and — if you're lucky — you can do:

If you’ve started using Microsoft’s SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) toolkit to create, schedule, and deliver extracts (machine-readable files) to vendors, non-MEDITECH applications, and even internal users who love their Excel, then you know that the same kinds of requirements come up over and over again…

Which means you can speed your SSIS development, and make it more flexible and easier to maintain, by creating an extract template to use each time you start a new project.

A common challenge in reporting (or extracting data, in this case) that we see over and over again is the need to transform one data structure into another. The best arrangement of data for the programmer writing the online application is not necessarily the best arrangement for the person writing a report, or an extract.

Some time ago we published a handy tip providing you with a stored procedure you could use to hunt for things in MEDITECH DR data structure(s) — by table name, by NPR DPM, etc. — so you could get down to writing some reports.

With the impending removal of possessive fields from MEDITECH C/S, MAGIC, and MT 6.x NPR-based DR modules (and yes, this may have already happened to you), you will need to go and fix oh-so-many SQL queries. When you do that, you’ll need to go and figure out which dictionary table you need to join in.

CMS Does Not Make Things Easy

Sometimes you just have to wonder… New ICD-10 diagnosis and procedural coding has been brought into play in the United Status (October 1, 2015 for diagnosis codes; next year for procedure codes), and CMS has — though a substantial effort — identified sets of equivalent codes between the -9 and -10 code sets. Your first thought may be, “This is huge! A tremendous help!” (If you want more details about this effort and you have not seen it already, check out the GEM website for Diagnoses and Procedures).

This is probably our second-most requested tip – how do I emulate, from SSRS, the standard MEDITECH scheduled auto-print to a spooled printer functionality?