How to configure allergy reaction severity
This document covers how to configure the Severity Filter For Drug-Allergy Alerts in the Order Entry Clinical Screening Defaults form.
After completing this how-to you will know how to set the Severity Filter for Drug-Allergy Alerts to only screen allergens above a certain reaction level and how to configure the different reaction severity codes.
You will first want to see what reaction severity codes have already been defined or define the reaction severity codes. In order to do this you will need to go into Dictionary Update (CWS).
Select the CWS File, and open the (10003) Reaction Severity dictionary element.
This dictionary has three extended dictionary values. Severity For Allergy Screening Filter is the value is used by the Severity Filter Drug-Allergy Alerts when clinical screening is done on orders. Accepted values are 1-9 (1 is the least severe, and 9 is the most severe). This is the value that we will need to focus on for this exercise. This should be set to a meaningful value based on the severity level. For Example:
If you have three codes defined: Mild, Moderate, Severe.
Mild might have a severity level of 3
Moderate might have a severity level of 6
Severe might have a severity level of 9
Once this value is set you can now set up the Severity Filter For Drug-Allergy Alerts in the Order Entry Clinical Screening Defaults form.
Second Step
Open the Order Entry Clinical Screening Defaults form. The Severity Filter For Drug-Allergy Alerts can now be set to a meaningful value. Based on the values previously stated we can set this to exclude allergies below a specified severity.
In this example:
Setting this value to 4 will cause any allergies on a patient specified as Mild to not be included in the order screening process since Mild has a severity value of 3. Any allergies that are specified as Moderate or Severe will be included in the screening process. Setting the screening filter value to 1 will cause all allergens on the patient to be screened. Setting the screening filter value to 9 will cause only the most severe allergies to be screened.
What's Next
You can define as many reaction severity codes as necessary. As long as the reaction severity code has a value defined in the Severity For Allergy Screening Filter then it can be included or excluded by the Severity Filter For Drug-Allergy Alerts. If this value is not set, then the allergen will always be screened.