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1. Go to the EMR ability (if you aren’t there already)

2. Select the Patient (if you haven’t already)

3. Find and select the patient form from the Patient Forms node (you may have to click the arrow to the left of the node in order to see the records)

4. Click the Red Minus button at the top of the sidebar and select Delete. You cannot delete Locked Patient Forms.

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Editing a Used Template

Once a template is used for a patient form, there is now patient data associated to that template. This means that if any edits are made to that template, some considerations must be taken in how the form is edited in order to protect that patient data. The way we edit a form that has patient data associated with it, is by duplicating the areas we are editing.

The general rule is this - If you are deleting or renaming any of the existing content on a template, then duplicate. If you are simply adding new content, then you don’t have to duplicate, though you still can if you’d like. However, in an effort to maintain data pulling for the areas you’re editing, it is recommended to only duplicate when necessary or when data pulling isn’t a consideration.

Data Pulling

Before going into detail on how to edit a template, let’s cover data pulling. The term “data pulling” can be used in a few ways. This could mean:

1. Pulling specific information from other parts of MacPractice into the form;
   When pulling data from other parts of MacPractice, this would utilize what are referred to as “System Pull Fields”. These are element that can be added to the template that will pull in this data from specific areas. For example, if you wanted to pull in the patient’s insurance information without having to type it manually on each form, you would add the insurance pull fields to the template. Since insurance information is likely already entered into the Patient ability, we can pull it in instead of re-entering that information again in a different area of MacPractice, such as a form. These pull fields are added during the template construction process or added to a template later, as an edit. System Pull Fields can be added to both the Form and Narrative sides of EMR/EDR templates.

2. Pulling data form the Form side to the Narrative side;
   Each element (or field) you add to a form section will have a pull field associated to it. These are referred to as “Narrative Pull Fields”. When formatting the narrative side of a section during the template construction process, these Narrative Pull Fields are used to control what and how the data from the form side will show on the printable narrative view. If there is a certain element from the form side that we don’t want to show on the narrative at all, we would remove the pull field for this element from the narrative. Generally, we format the Narrative Pull Fields as closely as possible to how the corresponding elements are formatted on the forms side. This formatting would include bolding and element position, among other things.
   In the following example, you’ll see that the elements used on the form side correspond with the pull fields on the narrative side. You’ll also see how the positioning of the elements can differ from the from side to the narrative side. The bottom image is an example of how it will look on the narrative of the patient form.
   

   Image Added

3. Pulling data from past forms into new forms
   Pulling data from form-to-form pertains to the ability to pull data from a previous form into a new form in order to be able to review what was covered on a previous patient visit and to keep the user from having to re-enter data that still pertains to the subsequent visit. Data that is pulled from a previous visit can then be overwritten, or added to, without affecting this data on the previous form.

   Form-to-Form data pulling is determined by the sections contained on your templates. Data pulling works at the section level, which means, if a specific section is used on multiple templates, data entered into that section in one form will pull into a completely different form, as long as the templates share that same section.

   For example, let’s say you have an H&P template that you collect patient data on once a year. If you create a form with the H&P template in January of 2018, then create another patient form with the same H&P template in January of 2019, since it is the same template, containing all of the same sections in both cases, all of the data from the visit in 2018 can pull to the visit for 2019. It is the same template and therefore all of the same sections.

   However, let’s say you have an Initial Exam form that you collect data on for a patient’s first visit, then a Follow-Up Exam form that you use for all subsequent visits. As long as both templates utilize the same sections, data can be pulled between the two. In this case, the Follow-Up form may be a more simplified version of the Initial Form, so you may only utilize some of the sections contained on the Initial from. In this case, the Follow-Up form won’t pull in all of the data the Initial Form has, but only those sections that are shared across both templates. If however, the Follow-Up form collect completely different data, and therefore utilizes completely different sections from the Initial form, then data pulling cannot occur between these two templates, even if some of the fields are collecting the same data.

   It is also important to note here that if you have two separate but identical sections and use one section on one template and the other section on another template, data will not pull for that section between those two templates. The two templates must use the same section in order to pull data between them. Even though the two sections may be identical in content, they are still two separate sections.

The Template Editing Process