Hi, What are the recommended OpenMRS strategies for building a robust longitudinal health record that effectively tracks and differentiates between:
New episodes of seasonal illnesses (like cough, cold, fever, flu) and their follow-up? Specifically, for seasonal illnesses, patients often improve after the initial visit and only return during the next occurrence of a new episode. How can we effectively close the previous episode and capture a completely new episode in OpenMRS, ensuring a clean start for Chief Complaint, Diagnosis, History, etc., while still retaining the data from past episodes for the longitudinal record?
Ongoing management of chronic conditions (like hypertension, diabetes, or stable psychiatric conditions)? For chronic conditions, patients typically present for follow-up visits. These visits are inherently connected to previous encounters and should be treated as follow-up visits, where providers assess the current status and potentially adjust medications. How can OpenMRS clearly represent these as follow-up visits, with relevant diagnoses and encounter context readily visible in the EMR? ?
Ultimately, how can we ensure providers can easily capture this information in OpenMRS in a way that supports both independent treatment of each acute episode AND a comprehensive understanding of the patient’s long-term health history for improved clinical decision-making?