by Toni Shortsleeve

Special Moments on my Outreachy Journey

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It has been an amazing few weeks. For those of you who have been following my journey, thank you for seeing me over half-way through the internship.

This is a remote position, and it’s been an excellent experience working with people from all over the world. Patience is a virtue when waiting for an answer, but it also is very exciting when we’re all online and working together at the same time.

For those who haven’t read the whole story, or missed a couple of articles, I’ll be happy to give you a quick catch up…

How I got here

In my first article, I shared how I beat the odds and was chosen to be one of two Outreachy interns at LibreHealth. I am providing some of the documentation on the LibreHealth Electronic Health Records system in English.

Adele is my intern-mate. She is translating all of the documentation into French. I like working with her. She has a great sense of humor and is always there to help when I’m feeling a little lost.

The second article discussed my preparation before I began the actual internship. Using the LibreHealth EHR demo site, I created documentation that guided a reader using an example of a patient that needed an x-ray referral.

In the third article, I talked about a few of the technical challenges I experienced when I tried to set up the Radiology module within Docker on my age old machine. ?

My last article shared some of my work and goals. Since then, I have had documents reviewed with a lot of interesting feedback.

And today has been all about using that feedback to move forward, learning more lessons, and shaping my future goals.

Documentation

I love the practice that I created, although Dr. Apgar was already there.

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Dr. Virginia Vapgar is logged into the EHR system

This practice first showed up in the LibreHealth User Guide that I documented. Now our staff is great, and they are showing us how a real practice is supposed to run.

While I am creating two different documents, there is a relationship between orders and encounters (or visits). For instance, orders can be one component of an encounter.

So occasionally the information overlaps. But I have to be careful that each document receives exactly the information needed.

I have been approved for the document about the Provider Order, which follows the patient and staff to create and transcribe an order for x-rays. I created a patient and with twin daughters for the purposes of my work.

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X-ray Plan for “Jessica Johnson”

I have recently submitted my 3rd revision of the Encounters document. This is a little different because it involves medication. There is a new code to learn for the cost and amount of medicine to be prescribed - on top of the visit code and billing codes. I am still learning about these, so it may take a little more time to get it in place.

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Medicine Plan for “Sarah Johnson”

I did my research to find what the medical codes were and how to create the orders. My EHR mentor was great at answering my questions and offering positive suggestions. Any errors are strictly my own. ?

Fee Sheets

I am still addressing the Fee Sheets. The codes must be placed in the correct order, justified with the proper codes, and priced correctly.

The ICD10 code is what the provider decides is the diagnosis for the problem being treated in that encounter. Several things go on a fee sheet - the ICD10 code(s) for the problem(s) treated in the encounter, the CPT4 and HCPCS codes for whatever services were rendered in the encounter, and any other miscellaneous fees.

Oops!

My EHR mentor has been so patient with me and my many missteps. Now that the Provider Orders document was approved, I had to place it in wiki format and onto the Libre wiki site. That was much easier said than done.

I wrote over a section that should not have been written over.

Fortunately, my mentor caught it before I did too much damage. Intern-mate Adele came to my rescue on how it should have been done. Now I’m revising the wiki document again.

At least I had uploaded most of the images first, so it won’t take as long as it did last time.

Outreachy

I’ve been listed as one of the Top Contributors at freeCodeCamp. It’s exciting to receive the award - but I’ve really just been focused on trying to stay sane, get answers, and help others who may stumble over the same obstacles that I have.

I contacted my Outreachy organizer hero, Sage Sharp. She has approved my travel stipend and so I can pay for airfare and one night in New York. I’m looking forward to meeting my freeCodeCamp hero Quincy Larson in person instead of just Skype, as well as members of our editor team. I am also looking forward to meeting my other personal FreeCodeCamp heroes who will be attending.

I am also looking forward to meeting my Tech mentor at LibreHealth. It will be my last chance to get answers to any additional questions I may have.

I’ve promised Outreachy that I will provide a special article with photos after the trip.

It’s only a month away, which is a reminder that my internship only has 6 more weeks now.

More to come …

There was so much that I wanted to accomplish by now. But I still have 6 weeks to meet my goals.

I’ll go back and finish the LibreHealth EHR part of the documentation so I can continue the Provider Orders by showing what happens on the LibreHealth Radiology side.

Thank you for joining me on my journey.