OPTIONS & CONSIDERATIONS FOR TEST PATIENTS IN PRODUCTION
By LaVere Williams, ASBA, BSBA
Considerations
When testing in a Production domain communication is very important. ADT messages flow not only to
Cerner applications but to any ancillary system within the facility. Some sites may require change request
and should have approval from all key departments.
- Registration: Resource to enter and arrive patients
- Patient Accounts/Billing: Resource to identify how to handle charges.
- Nursing Department: Resource to approve patient location as these patients will post to the Patient
List. Provide communication to the nursing staff.
- Interface Team: To inform and make decision if the engine will be used to block any ADT messages.
- Medical Records department.
- Physician participation if testing of the Inbox or Message Center.
An overall notification should be communicated to all ancillary departments. All orders that have
tasks attached will post to department Task List.
Environment
If there has not been a load of any new packages to your Test or Prod domains since full integration
testing which should consist of admit from ER to discharge you can only register through PMHNAreg.
Identify Testing Resources
- Include one billing resource for reconciliation and to flag the patients in the HPA system.
- Limit your testing resources. and the number of orders that will post charges per department. If the
order has posted in Production previously it will not be necessary to test all department orders.
Identify your Patient Naming Convention
It is suggested that a standard identification of these test patients is set. This allows for easy
identification on the patient and task list, easy reconciliation and less task requirement for the tracking
of the patient.
- Standard naming convention of patient name such as ZZTestonly, Patientone, with additional patients
names as Patienttwo, three etc. Limit of 6-8 patients only. This is dependant on the amount of testing
required.
- One patient identified for FirstNet testing identified as ZZFirstNet, Testonly
Patient Location
It is suggested to limit your testing locations to the Emergency Department (specifically for FirstNet
testing of the tracking board) and one or two inpatient floors.
Test Process
- Identify your testing time frame and stick to it.
- Communicate who is using which patient.
- Limit the number of orders that will post charges per department. If the order has posted in
Production previously it will not be necessary to test all department orders.
- Verify orders to charge viewer.
- Cancel all orders after testing verification via charge viewer.
- Discharge all visit’s at the end of the day if you have are testing for more than one day. This
will eliminate a room and bed charge.
If there has been new code added you can register through your foreign ADT for downstream system flow
verification and utilize the same process and include:
- Single House Attending can be identified and should give consent to use of his position. You may
also build in HNA a Test attending position but need to consider how that would affect your Master
Doctor Master aka physician dictionary.
- All reports rejected and forwarded to medical records via Inbox on those patients.
- Identify a specific time frame when we would change his password and complete this action.
- Allow charges to flow to HPA do not cancel orders.
- No charge clean up done on HPA side
Interface Engine
Yes you can use the interface to manipulate patient data outbound to all Cerner and ancillary
applications, using the naming convention or the FIN. It would easier to use the naming convention as it
will be one message block on the engine as opposed the multiple FIN’s.
Each FIN would be a separate message.
- If you use temporary location you could register all patients to a temporary location. Benefit:
Some of these locations may not have Task List attached to them.
- Virtual Beds can be used also. This really depends on how long you are going to be testing.
Virtual beds are good for this type of thing but the caveat is the regulations attached to bed control
with ADT. You are only allowed a certain amount of beds legally.
You can keep one test patient in Prod at all times for new form builds and form modification identified
as ZZTest, Formonly.