Filing incoming reports to the right chart
Lab results, consult letters and imaging reports arrive and must be filed to the right patient's chart. OpenAdapt could file each one from a demonstration and stop when the patient doesn't clearly match. We haven't recorded a filing run yet. In our look-alike test, it stopped on 5 of 5 look-alike patients and let 2 of 2 matches through.
Updated 2026-10-14
Today
| Step | Seconds |
|---|---|
| Open the report | 8 |
| Find the patient | 16 |
| Create the record and attach it | 59 |
| Log it | 14 |
| In all | 97 (about 1.6 minutes) |
Derived from the step times in the UCSF referral study; filing wasn't timed on its own. The risk is the wrong chart: two patients with the same name and birth date.
With OpenAdapt
It would find the patient from the report's identifiers, confirm the chart matches before attaching, attach the report, and read the chart back another way to confirm one new document on the right patient. When identifiers are close but not exact, it stops and leaves the report for a person.
What's been tested
Not tested yet: no filing run has been recorded on any system.
The right-patient check it would rely on is tested: with the same name, same birth date and record numbers like MG4408 and MG44O8, it stopped 5 of 5 times and let 2 of 2 matching patients through. On screens read only as pixels, it also stopped the right patient 44 to 49 times in 100 when the number had look-alike characters.
The readiness test we'd run
- On test patients or a test copy of your EMR, file a set of synthetic reports, including look-alike patients, a report with no matching patient and a duplicate report.
- Agree the pass criteria first, such as "every look-alike stops; every filed report reads back on the right chart; no report is filed twice".
- Nothing is filed to a real chart until you approve go-live in writing.
Is it a fit?
- Reports arrive as files or in an inbox, with the patient's identifiers as data.
- Your EMR offers a second way to read a chart's documents.
- Enough reports a day that filing takes real staff time.
Related: referral intake · the right-record check · booking
Sources
- Derived from the UCSF 2020 step times (JAMIA Open 2020;3(3):405): open the report 8 s, find the patient 16 s, create the record 59 s, log it 14 s; 97 s, about 1.6 minutes (our sum).
- OpenAdapt look-alike test set (synthetic rows), 2026: 5 of 5 look-alike patients stopped, 2 of 2 matching patients let through. On screens read only as pixels, 43.6 to 49.3% false stops when the right patient's record number has look-alike characters (O and 0, l and 1).
See it on your process
Bring one task your team types every day. We'll tell you whether it fits, and what a test on your own system would cover.