Orders from Multiple systems

[Ken Seachrist]

Has anybody had any experience with receiving orders from multiple systems and having to track all of the order numbers?  The problem is that each system needs THEIR order number, but the ORC can only handle 2 of them.  We could concatenate all of them into one of the ORC fields, but then we would have to send back to each system ALL of the order numbers so we would have them to update, resched, cancel, etc.

Anybody?

Topic

[Dennis Pfeifer]

Not sure that I fully understand your scenario, but have you thought of number ranging ..

say your lab system accepts a 9 digit order number ..

orders from interface 1 have 100000000 added to them

orders from interface 2 have 200000000 added to them ..

to strip .. use modulo on the way back ..

Dennis

[Ken Seachrist]

Dennis, what we have are several systems that can generate orders.  Each of these orders goes to other systems as well, that ALSO have order numbers that THEY assign.  So by the time we get to the 4th system, we now have 4 order numbers and only 2 fields to keep them.  If System A wants to cancel an order in System D, System A needs to know what System D’s order number is.  It could be that MULTIPLE systems need to be notified of this cancel.  So now I need to have 3 or 4 order number available and only 2 fields to store them where they are useable.  Hope this clears it up a bit.

[Debra Downs]

Hi Ken,

We have four ordering systems, and had the same issue.   Because there is the possibility of duplicate order numbers across systems, I decided to append a system identifier to the order number.  As an order is received from any of the systems, I add that system’s identifier to it:

 10916PCM (Pathways Care Manager)

 53266MIS (MiSys)

 33243STAR (STAR), etc.

Each ordering system must have the capability of receiving alpha-numeric order numbers.  Since the originating ordering system doesn’t know anyting about it’s own identifier, I strip it off on the outbound so it receives it’s original order number.

For instance, Care Manager sends 10916 as the order number – all other systems receive that number as 10916PCM.   On the orders outbound to Care Manager, I strip PCM off the order number, but leave all the others with the identifier.  I hope this makes sense the way I’m describing it.  This has been working for over a year here with no issues.

[James Cobane]

Ken,

We have taken a similar approach to Debra’s to address this issue, but we ‘prefix’ the order number with a system identifier, and strip it off as needed when sending back to the originating system.

Jim Cobane

Henry Ford Health

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