HealthMaster

We are currently using healthmaster in my district. We really like it and are heart broken that the powers that be are taking it away from us at the end of this year for a health module written into the general school program.

Pros: Can open multiple students at once - i open the kids as they come in and close them as i finish or when i get a chance. Even if you shut down your compy or the power goes out, HM maintains its pending list.

It gives you a to do list of all meds, medical procedures, scheduled screennings, etc.

It allows you to schedule a screening - if you need to recheck a kid later on in the week, month, etc, you can schedule it. It will even give you a pop up alarm to remind you it is time to administer a med or whatever, if you set it up. The reports menu is extensive. It analyzes immunization info that you enter for a student and will help determine if a student is vaccine compliant (i give this ability a 4/5 as it wasn't 100% accurate in who it said was compliant, but it is still a really nice and useful function).

You can set up templates for the most common visits you see so the process of charting a cut or a headache is simple, minimal and extremely quick.

I am sure i can list 50 other features i love... trust me when i say it's a great program!

Cons:

static drop down lists do not seem to be modifyable (sp?) by the user beyond disabling seeing them in your list. One thing that really bugs me is that the intervention of Range of motion exercises has a type in it - can't do anything about it, so i just live with it.

Medications all need to be added to the formulary individually. It gives you a few basic meds, but you will need to add things like Focalin and Naprosyn.

When adding screenings with individual data (like height and weight as opposed to pass fail like hearing or vision) it gets a little tedious. I wish there was a check box that would continually open the same student search for the screening you are working on.

I also wish there was a search function for symptoms/ complaints. It's broken down by system group, so you have to become familiar with where things are - it's common sense for the most part, but some items are not exactly where you'd expect to find them.

Medication admibistration is slightly counter intuitive - it wants you to select your drug and the medication unit (strength of one tablet) and then the dose - so an order for Ibuprofen would be 200 mg (per unit) dose 2 units.