In order to read internal data a user must understanding that there are a number of parts that combine together to make an internal structure.
1) Prefix – The prefix is the first part of the structure and is used to isolate all similar data types into specific groups. There are many prefixes, examples are “:”, “*”, ”/”, ”&” and “\”. All of these are used to group types of data together. An example would be “&” which is always used for dictionary entries. So any entry you see the an ampersand at the beginning is a dictionary entry. Generally colon (“:”) and (“*”) are used to house user data, such as patient information.
EX: *
2) Segment - . The second part of the physical file is the segment’s internal name. An example of the segment name is AA for the ADM.PAT.patient.file. This will always be in capital letters.
EX: *AA
3) Subscript – The subscript is the internal identifier for that specific piece of data. This value is used by the system to access the correct data at the correct time. It is broken into two categories Urn’s and Mnemonic. Urn’s tend to be numeric values used to store data which Mnemonic’s are used for dictionaries and are alpha-numeric.
EX: *AA[aa]
A) Descriptor – after a subscript there can be an additional identifier which will help isolate the data further. This is done so that related data can be stored in the same location for the same subscript
EX: *AA[aa]ER
4) Piece – A piece of data is the actual location of the data that is stored under the above internal
location. Each piece is divided by a pipe (“|”) and each pipe count starts at zero.
EX: *AA[aa]ER|1
5) Carrot – The last divider within the internal structure of Meditech is called a
carrot (“^”). The carrot is used to store parts of data under the same subscript and
descriptor.
Below we will review the following examples of internal data:
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*AA[1] = ^V00000001^TEST,NAME^REG ^^M000001^^
*AA[1]ER = ^20060715^0300^DIANOSIS^^
*AA[1]ALG[1] = ^ALLERGY NUMBER ONE
*AA[1]ALG[2] = ^ALLERGY NUMBER TWO
&AR[REL] = ^Y^RELIGION DICTIONARY
&AR[REL] = 823456789
?SLS[123] =0707:I00002R^1000000319^RECD^20060700^
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In the above box there are several fields that are shown as they appear within the internal structure of the Meditech database. The *AA is the ADM.PAT patient information location. The first piece of information is the account number which is shown as *AA[aa]|0. (Meditech starts all internal data counts at zero so the first piece is not one but zero, the second is one and so on.) The second piece is the patient’s name which is shown as *AA[aa]|1.
The *AA[1]ALG[1] has two subscripts that are defined. The first is the aa of 1. The second is the aal of 1 which means it was the first allergy filed for this patient. The second *AA[aa]ALG[2] has the same first subscript but a different aal which is 2. This means that this was the second allergy filed for this patient in the ADM routine.
The &AR is the religion dictionary within ADM. This is an example of a mnemonic subscript which is REL. The subscripts within this segment will be stored alphabetically and not how they are entered into the system.
The last field listing is the ?SLS which is the location of the LAB.L.SPEC specimen file. The URN for this field is 123 and it internally identifies that specific specimen within the LAB module.
Each piece of data is divided by the carrot symbol (^) which refers to the piece. Any field that does not have a value is called a “Nil”. The system leaves the data location blank and this is seen above as ^^.
See Related Article by Jenny Blue on Subscripts:
Jenny's Post