You can create as many Encounter Form Styles as you like, with each Style specifying its own list of services.
To specify which services you would like to appear in the service list on the form, use the NavBar to go to Scheduler Lookups > Encounter Form Styles.
Next, click the New button in the top toolbar, or use the <CTRL><N> hotkey, or right-click in the list area and select New from the pop-up menu. Enter a shorthand code and description for your new Encounter Form Style.
Look at the example in the figure at the top of this article. Notice that it contains not just a list of services, but also some headings to group related services. There are also blank lines to improve readability. You will be using the same SOS detail form to add all three kinds of lines. If you are not creating your Encounter Form Style based on an encounter form already in use by your organization, it is a good idea to plan your Style on paper before proceeding.
Note that only 60 lines will fit on a form, including headers and blank lines. Some offices might have an existing encounter form with more than 60 lines, but in all likelihood no single provider performs every single service on your form. Every provider in SOS can be linked to a different Encounter Form Style, so each Style should contain just those services that the provider is likely to render, plus perhaps a number of blank lines for write-ins of unusual services.
Let’s get started with an example that includes a section for “Evaluation and Testing”, and another section for “Therapy”. In both sections, we will include a number of blank lines so that the provider can manually add a service not already printed on the form.
- Start by adding the first heading. Click the New button at the top of the Encounter Form Lines list panel to open a detail form.
- Check the Section Heading box, enter the desired text, and save using the Save and New button. The Save and New button combines the save and new actions in a single mouse click, leaving you ready to enter your second line.
- You should see the heading line appear in the list panel in the background, and the Encounter Form Line detail form will now be empty. For our second line we want a blank line below the heading we just added, so leave the form empty and click Save and New again. You’ll see the blank line appear in position 2 in the list.
- Now let’s add a service line. Click the Service Code field to diplay your list of services, and select an appropriate service for this section. In our example, it will be “IE, Evaluation 120 minutes”.
You can accept the description copied from the Service List, or adjust it as you like, then click Save and New again. - We now continue, as described in the previous steps, adding the service “IV, Initial Visit”, “MMPI, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory”, “NPS, Neuropsychological Screening Battery”, and five blank lines.
- We continue with our next section, with the heading “Psychotherapy”, a blank line, “IT30, Individual Therapy 30 minutes”, ” IT60, Individual Therapy 60 minutes”, “GT90, Group Therapy 90 minutes”, and six blank lines. After these entries our Encounter Form Lines list looks like this:
And when printed, the service list section for our example looks like this:
To eliminate all that white space, be sure to configure 60 lines to each of your Styles. You can keep adding blank lines to get to 60, if necessary.
Changing the order of the lines in an Encounter Form Style
At some point in setting up your configuration, you may decide that the lines are not in the order you really want. If so, it is very easy to move a line up or down in the list. Simply highlight the line you would like to move, then use the blue Up and Down arrows in the toolbar at the top of the list to move the line to the desired position.
Linking Encounter Form Styles to your Providers
On the data screen for each of your providers, you will find a field called Encounter Form. In order to print encounter forms for the provider, you must select an existing Encounter Form Style in that field. If you do not select a Style, no encounter form will print. The Style you select, of course, will dictate which set of detail lines appears on that provider’s encounter forms.
