# Opening a Patient Record

After you log in to CPRS, the Patient Selection screen, shown below, is the first thing to appear. You should now select a patient record to view.

To select a patient record, follow these steps:

1. If you are just opening CPRS, skip to step 2. Otherwise, select File | Select New Patient...

Note: If you have just entered orders or documents that are unsigned, a screen will pop up asking you to review and sign the changes.

2. Do one of the following:

- Type the patient's full social security number with or without dashes (000-44-4444 or 000444444) or type the full social security number with “P” as the last character (000-44-4444p, or 000444444p).
- Type part of the patient’s last name or the patient’s entire name (e.g. “CPRSp” or “CPRSpatient,One”).
- Type the first letter of the patient’s last name and the last four digits of the patient’s Social Security number (c4444).

CPRS will try to match what you entered to a patient and highlight that patient. The patient's name and other information will appear below the Cancel button.

Note: CPRS now only auto-selects (highlights in blue and places that entry in the field) a patient name if the user types enough characters to uniquely identify a name in the list. If the user does not enter enough characters to uniquely identify an item, CPRS waits until the user explicitly selects an item using the mouse or the keyboard.

3. Verify that the correct patient is highlighted. If the correct patient is highlighted, click OK. If the correct patient is not highlighted, scroll through to find the correct patient, highlight the name, and then click OK.

Note: If CPRS finds more than one patient with the same last name and same last four digits of the social security numbers, a box will popup listing possible matches. The Similar Patients popup displays the Patient’s name, DOB, SSN, current location, physician, last visit date, and last location (admission/clinic). Select the correct patient and click OK.

When you select OK, CPRS opens to the Cover Sheet (unless you have set it to open to a different tab).

You can also use the radio buttons under the Patient List heading (located on the left-side of the window) to group the patient list according to provider, team, specialty, clinic, or ward. When you select a specific list for a provider, team, specialty, clinic, or ward, CPRS will display the associated patients in the Patients list box, followed by a line, and then the comprehensive patient list. You can then scroll to find the name. Your Clinical Coordinator will usually create the lists for the teams, wards, and so on.

How CPRS Sorts Names

VistA software uses a set of characters that include uppercase and lowercase Latin alphabetic characters (A-Z, a-z), numbers (0-9), and other special characters.

This is important because of how names are sorted if the user is searching for a partial name. If VistA has stored characters other than the Latin alphabetic and numeric, such as ñ, and the user does a partial search (types in only part of the name, for example), the names may not display in the order the user expects.

For example, if you had patients or clinicians with names like Pina, Piña, Piñon, Pine, Pinto, Pitcher, Pitt, Pixon, and Pizzelo, and the Piña and Piñon were entered with an ñ. If the user typed in "pi" as what CPRS should search for, CPRS would display the names as shown below:

Pina

Pine

Pinto

Pitcher

Pitt

Pixon

Pizzelo

Piña

Piñon

Note that Piña is after Pizzelo. This is because VistA sorts these characters based on their numeric values in the character set VistA uses. For example, in that table, the number for lowercase "a" might be 97, "z" might be 122, and "ñ" might be 241. Characters other than the uppercase and lowercase Latin alphabetic characters and numbers, such as ñ or the tilde (~) will display wherever their numeric equivalent falls, which is generally after z.

Related Topics

Closing a Patient Record

Setting a Default Patient List

Patient Lists

Cover Sheet