changine case

[Kevin Crist]

Our HIS system sends out all caps for name, address and other things. We are integrating  now with a system from our facility and they have 2 years worth of data that they have first letter capitalized the lower for the rest. When we send over a transaction with all caps it makes a new patient. has anyone come across this before. Will it take one big tclproc or possible in an xlate?

thanks for your thoughts and comments

Topic

[Vince Angulo]

If it was just a few fields the following tcl fragment would work in the xlate:

set xlateOutVals [string toupper $xlateInVals]

But, if you’re doing wholesale replacement across entire segments or messages applying the string toupper command would be more efficient in a pre-processing UPoC.

Hope this helps.

[Kevin Crist]

yeah, its kind of a wholesale thing from what i gather…ie

we are sending DOE^SMITH^Z  and need it changed to Doe^Smith^Z.

Address being sent is 210 OAK STREET^CRAZYTOWN^IN and they need 210 Oak Street^Crazytown^IN.  Plus insurance names, and any next of kin names.

[James Cobane]

Kevin,

Do you need to convert the data to all UPPER or convert it from all UPPER to mixed-case (i.e. Smith vs. SMITH)?  If you need to convert to all UPPER then the command Vince shows will do the trick.  If you need to convert to mixed case, there is a similar ‘string’ command:

    string totitle $LastName

But, you would need to perform this on each name element individually (i.e. First, Last, etc.).

Hope this helps.

Jim Cobane

Henry Ford Health

[Kevin Crist]

yes i am going from all UPPER to mixed case. In many fields. thanks for the comments

[Charlie Bursell]

If you use string totitle don’t forget to check names with more than one word.

For example what would you do with a last name like “Van Horn”

It is never easy, that’s why you get the big bucks  😉

[Tom Rioux]

Here is one possible solution:

For names:

hcitcl>set name “VAN HORN”

hcitcl>foreach nn [split $name] { lappend newname [string totitle $nn] }

hcitcl>echo $newname

Van Horn

or for addresses:

hcitcl>set address “1234 WHISPERING WIND DRIVE”

hcitcl>foreach addy [split $address] { lappend naddy [string totitle $addy] }

hcitcl>echo $naddy

1234 Whispering Wind Drive

Surely it can’t be that simple.  I must be missing something or left out some possibilities.

Tom

[Jim Kosloskey]

Hyphenated names, names like McKinley… 🙁

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.

[Kevin Crist]

Thank you all for your comments. This should be a fun one to do.

[Tom Rioux]

I guess here it would be best to go with percentages.   There is no way to account for EVERY possibility and you will have to realize that there may be some manual cleanup that has to be done on the back end of this whole process.  

The hyphenated can probably easily be accounted for with an extra command or two in the loop.  However, the “McKinley” or something like it is a whole different story.  There could be many variations like “McKinley” or “MacGyver”.  Is there a sure fire way to account for every variation and know which letter needs to be capitalized and which ones doesnt? (Charlie??  🙂 ) Then again, what if you get someone who spells their name like “e. e. white” who never used capitilization in their name.  (Ok, Ok, I’m going a little overboard with that one but you get my point… 😀 )

Guess it is safe to go with what will work for the majority of the names or words and not run the risk of creating further errors.   I don’t know about you but I’ve been having fun with this one!!!  

Tom

[Jim Kosloskey]

This is just me musing out loud but,

Aren’t you at all concerned that the system is using the Patient Name for Identification?

I mean, after all, that field is subject many errors in a normal situation.

Maybe suggest they modify their matching routine to internally change both to the samecase (upper or lower), do the compare and only add a new patient if that mismatches.

Even then, I bet there will be pletny of mis-matches on the same patient because the two systems do not match regardless of case considerations.

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.

[Kevin Crist]

yes. this is an ancillary application that they have been using for a couple of years and they have always handtyped the name in like that, we are now interfacing with them so they dont have to use that , but they do match on name because they have never recieved our medical record number to match on. thats how we found this big mess. We are hoping the vendor can do some type of conversion for us but i am exploring the possibilities just in case, because if they do that i am sure it wont be cheap.

[Tom Rioux]

One possible solution to the hyphen.  I think this would cover it…correct me if I’m wrong Jim and Charlie.   It may not be the most elegant of solutions……

hcitcl>set full “KEITH VAN-HORN”

#Initialize your “newfull” variable

hcitcl>set newfull “”

# Now run the foreach

hcitcl>foreach name [split $full] {

     foreach part [split $name -] {

       lappend tmp [string totitle $part]

     }

     set newname [join $tmp -]

     lappend newfull $newname

     set tmp “”

}

hcitcl>echo $newfull

Keith Van-Horn

[Kevin Crist]

Finally got some time to work on this. I seem to be getting the totitle to work kinda, it will lowercase everything except first letter of name, but it doesnt capitalize the first letter of the first name. I thought i was on the right track with this but need some more guidance, also am i returning the changed name correctly to the message? Thanks very much for any ideas.

###############################################################################

###############################################################################

###############################################################################

# Name: tpsAlls_Formatting

# Purpose: This tclproc formats the case of the names, addresses, Insurances

#           for Allscripts. Example…DOE,JOHN ->Doe,John.

#          The patient/relative fields are listed below:

# PID-5: Patient Name

# PID-9: Patient Alias

# NK1-2: Name

# GT1-3: Guarantor Name

# GT1-4: Guarantor Spouse Name

# IN1-16: Name of Insured

#

#

#

#

#

#

# UPoC type: tps

# Args: tps keyedlist containing the following keys:

#       MODE    run mode (“start”, “run” or “time”)

#       MSGID   message handle

#       ARGS    user-supplied arguments:

#              

#

# Returns: tps disposition list:

#          Continues the modified messages

# OR

# Continues un-modified message if the segment is missing

#

# Created: Kevin Crist

#

proc FormatAllsName { NameFldList subSep } {

   set i 0

   foreach Name $NameFldList {

   set subfldList [split $Name $subSep]

   lset subfldList [string totitle $Name ]

   lset NameFldList [join $subfldList $subSep]

incr i

   

echo Name:$Name

echo subfldList:$subfldList

echo NameFldList:$NameFldList

}

  return $NameFldList

}

proc tpsAlls_Formatting { args } {

 

 

###############################################################################

###############################################################################

# #

# Get the Connection/Proc Name for the Error/Debug Messages   #

###############################################################################

###############################################################################

 

  global HciConnName

  set myname “$HciConnName/[lindex [info level 1] 0]”

  set nowis [clock format [clock scan now] -format “%D – %T”]

 

###############################################################################

###############################################################################

# #

# Initialize variables used #

###############################################################################

###############################################################################

   

   set dispList {} ;# Disposition List Returned to Engine

   set fldSep “” ;# Field Seperator – get from MSH

   set subSep “” ;# SubField Seperator – get from MSH

   set repSep “” ;# Repeating Field Seperator – get

    ;#     from the MSH

   set segList

[Bob Richardson]

Greetings,

Not familiar with the ins and outs of the “lset” command but it looks like the lset is only modifying the first element in your names list.  Here is an alternate coding strategy to consider:  for example:

tcl>set name “BOB^RICHARDSON”

BOB^RICHARDSON

tcl>set names [split $name ^]

BOB RICHARDSON

tcl>foreach name $names {

lappend newnames [string totitle $name]

}

tcl>echo $newnames

Bob Richardson

tcl>

tcl>set newnames [join $newnames ^]

Bob^Richardson

tcl>echo $newnames

Bob^Richardson

Good hunting !

[Max Drown (Infor)]

I would suggest working with the database team of the receiving application to try to do one of two things:

1) Do not match on patient name, but instead match on a unique number such as MRN or a combination of unique numbers such as MRN and DOB or some such. Or at the very least, make the patient name matching case insensitive.

2) Convert all of the names in the database to uppercase. There’s just so many things that go wrong with the camel back case conversion you are attempting.

-- Max Drown (Infor)

[Author]

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