RIS REPORT WRITING STAPLES
By Ronald Sims
Creating standards and norms for the UDR’s in RIS form documents can increase productivity and reduce
stress. In RIS UDR’s four date parameters and four variables are given. In general, the first two date/time
parameters (begin date and end date) and vary between the four parameters. Doing the routine tasks as
effectively and expediently as possible allow you to focus on the more difficult tasks. Creating a notepad
file to keep staple codes to copy and paste from when you are building your UDR’s is one way to save time and
keep things simple. Here are some instructions to help guide you.
First, create a notepad file and place it where you always pull from. If you are on a network, keep a backup.
There are several reasons for doing this. First, you can leave it open while you are in word processing, and it
will not be corrupted with formatting. Leave it open as you go in and out of your word processing form documents
and output documents. This is a good little trick, as notepad does not interfere with RIS and its use of MS
word and it prevents importing anything weird that you cannot see with your code. Lastly, as you save
documents, you can easily see the icon difference of a txt file, as opposed to an rtf or doc file. These
simple things will allow you to cut to the chase when you are setting up you reports.
So what code do you want to start to keep in this cute little txt file? This is where the ordinary usually
becomes a pain in the neck. I tend to keep three sections: my header code, my declares and ifs for the body
and my pat index variables.
They only change slightly, so it keeps me from having to go into any other form document, copying it
somewhere and pasting it, or retyping from memory. This will confirm your code is correct and you don’t need to
rely on model documents, or worse, your memory. This will also cut down on your “forgot to…” when you
initialize your document or the illegals “,”, etc… Please follow the link for a sample of the code that I keep
in my txt file:
Sample Text File
Finally, put it in a place that is easy to access when you are writing your UDR’s. You can keep in on your
desktop, on a thumb drive or on your share file on the network. As always, make a backup.
As you start to think of things you can add what is staple for your organization, like the completed header:
[Orginaization]
Hospitals: [@p1_header]
Departments: [@p2_header]
Date: [@begdate] to [@enddate]
There is no limit to what you can keep in it. The key is to keep it simple. Placing code you use 80 percent
of the time in your UDR forms documents in order to cut down on time and guess work.
Happy report writing!
Please contact VCS with any questions you may have at
vcs@getvitalized.com or (610) 444-1233.