Using Epic Record Viewer

Owned by Michael Y. Kopinsky (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Feb 21, 2024
5 min read

Record Viewer is an Epic Tool that lets you see pretty much anything in the database… if you know where/how to look. Here are some tips for figuring out how to find stuff.

  1. Users don’t have access to Record Viewer by default. You need to request access. Usually a simple IS Service Desk ticket is enough.

  2. An “INI” is the equivalent to a database table. Often, the hardest part of using Record Viewer is knowing which INI to look in. Below is a table with some INIs I’ve used in Record Viewer.

  3. If you’re not sure what INI to look in for patient data, the best bet is always to start with the EPT. You can Cmd-F (or click the binoculars icon) and search for whatever piece of data you’re looking for. (For example, we were looking for a surgery and had the surgery ID but didn’t know what INI contains surgeries. So we searched the patient’s EPT record (for the contact corresponding to the surgery date) for that ID, and found that it was a reference to an ORC record.)

  4. Every Record in Epic has a “Contact” which is basically the version of the item. Sometimes that version history is easy to understand, and you’d only ever really want the latest (like see below for the Contacts of my Employee record). For a patient (EPT), the Contacts (aka versions of their record) are all of their appointments - the way to think of this is that the chart is a series of photocopies of their medical record as of each appointment. So some of the data in the EPT is their demographic data, but some of it is the appointment data and both are really intermingled within the EPT record.

    Contacts for EMP record
    Contacts for an EPT record

  5. An Item (within an INI) is equivalent to a column within a database table. (Except that a database field always has one value, and an item can be an array or the like.)

  6. The Clarity data dictionary (https://datahandbook.epic.com/ClarityDictionary ) lets you search for Clarity tables containing a specific INI/item. Like, I saw in Record Viewer that empoyee email address is in EMP item 150, so I can search for that in Data Dictionary and see that CLARITY_EMP_DEMO has a column EMAIL corresponding to EMP 150. Obviously you can also use this the opposite direction - if you’re looking at a table in Clarity Data Dictionary that column tells which you INI/item to look at in Record Viewer if you want to see it live.

Category

INI (and official epic name)

Description

Example

Category

INI (and official epic name)

Description

Example

Patients and Encounters

EPT (Generic Patient Database)

 

(search with any MRN. See note above about Contacts)

An EPT is both a patient and an encounter.

Surgeries

ORC (OR Case)

 

A procedure (e.g. a colonoscopy). The OR Case ID appears in SCH-2-1 in the HL7 scheduling messages we receive from OpTime.

Employees

EMP (Employee Master)

 

KOPINSKY, MICHAEL Y [KOPINSKM]

Flowsheet

FSH (Flowsheet Database)

This is what a provider selects in Review Flowsheets to see a set of fields

UPHS AMB WTH BLOOD PRESSURE [347]

This flowsheet 347 contains 3 fields:

TIM (Timeline Build)

This is what a provider selects in Review Flowsheets to see a set of fields

This replaced FSH as of Sept 2023 (at least in PennChart)

https://nova.epic.com/Select?CstID=297&RnID=819864

UPHS AMB WTH BLOOD PRESSURE [103995]

FLT

This is one of the IDs we send in the AddFlowsheetValue webservice

T UPHS AMB WTH BP [21000111]

This also has 3 components:

FLO (Flowsheet Groups/Rows)

This is one of the IDs we send in the AddFlowsheetValue webservice

  • R UPHS AMB WTH BP [21000110]

  • R UPHS AMB WTH SYSTOLIC BP [21000112]

  • R UPHS AMB WTH DIASTOLIC BP [21000113]

 

FSD (Flowsheet Data)

 

a single systolic/diastolic value

To look one up:

  • Click the checkbox for “Show Record Selection Options”

  • Click Search Method: Item

  • Search for Item EPT ID = the patient MRN, and FLO ID = the flowsheet ID

  • Click Search, and it’ll pull up a list of records

  • Select the record you want (probably the most recent one), and then hit Accept to close the dialog

  • Click “View Record” within the Record Selection box to actually load the full record

Embed

FDI (Desktop Integration)

embed

WAY TO HEALTH LINK [100018]

E0E (External Clients)

App listed in App Orchard

Penn - CHF WayToHealth [100009]

E2N (Activity)

button within a menu

UPHS_WAY_TO_HEALTH_LINK [3040000104]

Smart Data Elements

HLX (Clinical Concepts Lexicon)

Smart Data Element (SDE)

  • COVID-19 W2H SMS MESSAGE DELIVERED [UPHS#13085]

  • UPHS W2H PAT SRX NOTE 1 [UPHS#13265]

  • UPHS PATIENT ENROLLED IN COVID WATCH PROGRAM [UPHS#12308]

HLV (Clinical Concepts Value)

SDE Value

To look up a patient’s SDE value:

  1. Find the patient in EPT (see above)

  2. Jump down to the CONCEPT INDEX NOADD item

  3. It will look something like this

     

  4. Find the SDE whose value you’re looking for (e.g. UPHS#12630) and copy the number next to it

  5. Search for that number in HLV

The first value in item 50 is the length (which for the SDEs we write to, is always 1). The 2nd is the actual value.

 

 

Inbasket

HIS (Message Type Definitions)

Inbasket message type

UPHS COVID-19 WATCH [304999902]

STAFF MESSAGE [4]

HIP (Message Pool)

Inbasket pool

HUP ED SMS FAILED TEXT RESULTS [1600080046]

EOW

Inbasket Message

(the message ID that you can see in an incident attachment)

 

LQL

order question

 

HL7 Results

EAP (Procedure Master)

procedure

WAY TO HEALTH - WEIGHT MONITOR MESSAGING [PROC7437]

Used for HL7 inbound results for EMPOWER study

LRR (Components)

 

WAY TO HEALTH:MESSAGE [36842]

Used for HL7 inbound results for EMPOWER study

LLB (Resulting Agencies)

 

WAYTOHEALTH [238]