Monday, June 18, 2012

Do we want a location hierarchy?

OpenMRS supports the idea of a location hierarchy. Is this something we want to use?

Imagine we do an installation at Amani Hospital. Is there any point in recording that certain encounters take place at different sub-locations? E.g. "Amani Hospital - Outpatient Clinic", "Amani Hospital - Outpatient Pharmacy", etc.

I'm assuming this is not helpful, but someone should let me know if they think it will be. :-)

The only reason I ask at all is because I've always sort-of wanted to use the feature, but never had a chance...

4 comments:

  1. It is useful to have locations where the system is used. Like Amani TB clinic, Amani MCH clinic, Amani Patient Support center, Amani MC theatre

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  2. I think it's quite useful, I've used it a lot in both lab and HR modules. It may even be useful for bed census by having bed #s in each ward under the ward. The question in my mind is, does reporting look for a location equal to a given location, or a location which is contained in the given location?

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    Replies
    1. If we end up doing this, we'll definitely need to make sure that reporting respects it. Possibly, given our time frame, this will mean ensuring that all our reports can run on a list of locations, and exploding out that list before running the report.

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  3. Many clinics in Kenya are evolving to consist of multiple service areas. In AMPATH, we are working with many of the clinical innovation sites, to set up service areas for chronic disease (to include HIV), acute care, and maternal/child health. One could imagine needing to distinguish visits that happened in one service area vs. another.

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