Part of the problem I am seeing is that they have been keeping records in a haphazard way and need to formalize it, but since they have not formalized it, the OP is having trouble putting everything in its place. At least, that's my take. Which is why I put in my comments on the design process.
One of the side-effects of haphazard data gathering is that it might appear that they are ignoring things. But maybe the REAL problem is that without a more formal method, they have not asked the right questions about their data flow model yet. They aren't ignoring something so much as they are unaware of something in the process.
A theme I see in this thread is that they are looking for trends and long-term statistics and possible spikes in certain events. In other words, time-correlated events, so they can tell the difference between a "normal" rate of complications and a sudden rate jump in some type of complication. Knowing that a particular event occurred during a prior admission vs. a more recent one helps them figure out if the complication WAS iatrogenic instead of ideopathic.
Does "a new admission" mean "next visit" or are we actually talking about successive hospitalizations ?
Depends on their business rules. I have no idea.
To try to design something without basic grasp of common methods and data-gathering procedures in the field is a hopeless undertaking and waste of everyone's time. Pardon me for speaking plainly.
Jiri, was that aimed at me or the OP? Saying that something is hopeless doesn't help the problem and could be taken as disparaging.
I am not clear here whether their facility is for the USA equivalent of a general clinic with primary-care physicians and outpatient specialists, or whether this is a specialty surgical clinic for outpatient and short-stay patients. In the former case, the patient's medical chart is CLEARLY much more important. In the latter case, I'm not so sure. So your comments about medical charts might or might not be as relevant as you think.
Based on what I've read, I see this as the latter of those two, where they are looking for problems that are at least potentially caused by errors in the clinic's operational procedures. But they need to take their data in a way that conforms to a UK standard for same, at least a little bit, hence their "standardized complication charts."
And as for designing something without a basic grasp of common methods... Please don't forget that Access is SO inviting to
beginners - who NECESSARILY will not know those methods of which you speak. Our OP commented in passing that he thought Access would help him more, but now he realizes that he is still responsible for driving the process. So yes, they have a learning curve. So what? We ALL started with one. And everybody's got to start sometime.
