Understanding Uncategorized History Items
To ensure all selected history items remain visible, practice users should always document a patient’s history using the designated Practice History Template.
When a user documents history on a template not used by other practice users, history items may appear in the Preview section as "Uncategorized."
- Why does this happen? The uncategorized label appears because the items do not exist in the template being used to view the patient’s data.
- How to resolve this? Switch your user view to the correct Practice History Template to ensure all history items are properly categorized.
Look Back Feature to See Dropped Uncategorized Data
If using more than one history template then your history data could be out of sync, and some history items may have been inadvertently deleted. You would know this was occurring because you would see Uncategorized data and when you saved the history - those items would just drop out of view. To address this, we have implemented a look back feature that allows users to view and manually restore deleted history items.
This feature was necessary to correct a bug in our system where:
- Previously, if a user viewed uncategorized history but took no action, OfficeEMR automatically removed those items from view and placed them in the patient’s history audit log.
- Now, uncategorized history remains visible until a user actively and intentionally updates the history item.
Using the Deleted History Lookback Feature
If your practice has more than one history template in use (uncommon), follow these steps to restore deleted history:
Step 1: Enable Access to the Lookback Feature
- An admin must grant your user account the Role: Uncategorized History Deletion.
- By default, this role is turned off for all users.
Step 2: View Deleted History Items
- Once the role is enabled, navigate to the patient’s chart and access the History section.
- A one-time pop-up window will appear, displaying any Deleted History items found in the patient’s audit log.
Step 3: Determine Next Steps
- If the Deleted History window displays “No deleted history,” there are no missing history items, and you can simply close the window.
- If deleted history items are displayed, compare them with the patient’s current history and manually update their record as needed.
Step 4: Accessing Deleted History Later
- If you closed the Deleted History window but need to access it again, simply:
- Click on the white space to the right of the History template data.
- Select Deleted History to reopen the Deleted History screen.
This process ensures accurate documentation of patient history while preventing unintended data loss.
