This article seeks to cover the basic workflow for building an EMR/EDR Form Template from beginning to finish. We'll cover recommended steps and practices when building your Form Templates and demonstrate how to effectively utilize the Narrative View to provide a quick readout of a finished patient form. If you have any issues or are confused by any of the steps provided, don't hesitate to contact MacPractice Support!
If you're looking for a more basic overview of the EMR/EDR Ability, click here.
You can read more about Form Elements and Pull Fields in their respective articles.
If you are interested in custom templates designed by our MacPractice Support team, please read this article here.
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Workflow Overview of Form Template Creation
Let's first cover the general workflow of creating a Form Template.
First, you'll create the Form Template in one of your category nodes.
Next, you'll prepare Form Sections for use in your Template. You can create your own by adding a new Form Section in the sidebar and adding Form Elements to it.
You'll also need to edit each Form Section's Narrative side, which contains a written summary of the results of the information entered into a patient form. We recommend editing the Narrative AFTER adding all desired Form Elements into a Form Section!
Once you've prepared your Form Sections, you can then add them to a Form Template.
We recommend generating a test form on a test patient account to ensure it looks how you'd like. Make sure your forms are ready and tested before using them in a live environment!
You're done!
Creating a Form Template
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To first create a Form Template, you'll select a Category node in the EMR/EDR Sidebar. These are the pink folders that can be added in the Form Category node.
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Here, you can name the Form Template, add a short description so you can discern it from others down the road, set a Specialty for the form (this only impacts what category it is filed under when uploaded to the Shared Forms node, and the viewed zoom size in the preview.
Adding Form Sections
Next, you'll need to decide on what Form Sections you wish to add.
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When adding these to a Template, you'll want to double check how their Narrative View is formatted. We'll discuss the Narrative View in a later section of this article, but you can quickly check the Narrative side of a Form Section by pressing Command-\ (Backslash) on your keyboard.
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Creating Custom Form Sections
You can create a new Form Section by clicking the Green Plus in the sidebar with the Form Section node selected.
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In the Forms Palette, you can set up details about the Form Section as displayed in the screenshot above. You can read more about the Forms Palette in this article here.
You'll use the Forms Palette to drag in Form Elements into the Form Section. There are several Form Elements at your disposal, which we strongly recommend you review in the Form Elements article.
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When you've added an Element, you can customize details about the Element in the Inspector area of the Forms Palette, shown in the image above. On the General Tab, you can typically edit the placement and size of the element by adjusting the X, Y, Width, and Height fields. You'll also want to set a clear name for this Element, which will help identify it when filling out the form, and when identifying it in the Narrative View.
You can also drag in Pull Fields, which are used to bring in information from several areas in the MacPractice database. You can drag Pull Fields into both the Form Section or the Narrative View.
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Formatting Advice: Templates built by MacPractice Template Specialists typically use Lucida Grande as the font. The size varies, but typically will be 10 pt for the body of the template. Additionally, on the narrative we generally use 12 pt bold and underlined for section titles, and 14 pt bold and underlined for the name of the form. If you want to adjust the default font type and size, you can do so in the MacPractice Menu > Preferences > EMR > General. |
Editing the Narrative
Once you have added all the Form Elements you'd like to see on your Form Section and you're comfortable with their layout and customization, let's take a look at the narrative. You can switch over to the Narrative View by pressing Command-\ (Backslash) on your keyboard, or you can switch to the narrative via the EMR/EDR Menu.
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If we change it to Yes and No respectively...
Then the narrative on the patient form will appear as so if this checkbox is checked ------->
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If you ever need to re-add a Form Element to the Narrative that you accidentally or intentionally removed, you can do so on the Forms Palette under Pull Fields. The Narrative View must be showing, and when it is, there is an additional category containing the Form Section's elements.
Adding Pull Fields To a Form
Pull Fields are identifiers that will "pull" the information from a field or area in MacPractice and print it in its place, hence the name Pull Fields. In this context, pull fields are used to populate more data onto a patient form.
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