EHR:  Demographics

To meet EHR Meaningful Use requirements, a provider must record preferred language, gender, race, ethnicity, and date of birth for a certain percentage of their patients.  Before entering demographic information, turn on Public Health in Show Features, and set up primary Language Options.

1. In the EHR dashboard, click Enter demographics to open the Patient Edit window.
2. In the Gender column, select male, female or unknown.
3. Enter the patient's date of birth in the Birthdate field. The patient age will automatically calculate.
4. Click the Language dropdown to select the patient's primary language, or indicate that they declined to specify.
5. Click the Race dropdown and highlight the patient's race, or indicate that they declined to specify.  More than one race can be selected.  Make sure only desired race options are highlighted.
6. Click the Ethnicity dropdown to select the patient' ethnicity, or indicate that they declined to specify. In order for the ethnicity value to be saved, you must also select a Race.

Non-EHR users will see a selection box that combines race and ethnicity.  EHR users have two separate dropdowns for race and ethnicity, though they are combined when stored in the database.

Technical Details
The race options were taken from http://healthcare.nist.gov/docs/170.304.c_RecordDemographicsAmb_v1.1.pdf.  On page 3 of that document, there is a broken link to the government standards.  A live version is at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/fedreg_directive_15. Scroll down about 4 pages to Appendix 1, where it describes the 4 different races. Open Dental includes 5 races.  There is a feature request, #1262, for adding more race options, but the existing 5 are sufficient for Meaningful Use.