Enterprise Registration Management (ERM) Rule Space Constraints
By Paulette Bulko

Those of you who work with ERM closely are quite aware of the 10,000 character limit set for START, FINISH, and Interfield rules. Well, you will be happy to know that there is a way around this character limit, a tip that is is easy to learn, implement, and maintain – without effecting your tables or outbound interfaces.

As a Cerner Patient Access consultant I was working with a client to assist them in optimizing their ERM and Enterprise Scheduling Management (ESM) applications. The client was at their wits end trying to understand how they were going to get more rules in place for a few important conversation edits, which would ultimately increase their bottom line.

In order to overcome the concern an analysis of their current state of conversations and rules was done to see where characters could be trimmed to fit more in as needed. There were some areas that were easy to edit and remove to free up some space; extra comment markings marking a start and finish of a rule and rules that were commented out completely that were no-longer being used. If it is not needed, take it out and you will gain back much needed space.

Even after the quick edit the client still needed more space for sophisticated rules. Luckily, I have a trick up my sleeve that opens all the space they could ask for; using an unused interfield rule to hold a START or FINISH rule that would still be called when needed. This tactic gives sites virtually unlimited character space to write all the rules one could ever need.

If you want more information/details on this particular trick, or anything else, please contact VCS at vcs@getvitalized.com or 610.444.1233 today.