Time to Start Cleaning up your Records
Yeah for fall and winter time! Patient load slows down and you almost get a chance to breathe. It is not the wonderful time of year to work on paperwork. I know that this is, by far, everybody's favorite part of the the job and can't wait to get started!
The reason I bring this topic up now, is because I know through experience that the sooner you get started the easier it is. It is so much better to do a little here and there because, by the time the new year surprises us and reports are do, all the data is cleaned up.
Here are some of the fields that you might want to start looking at to make corrections.
Cities: believe it or not we sometimes spell our cities wrong. I was just going through one of my accounts and found one city that just had a . (period) in it. Another had both the full typed out city and then just the quick hand version. In the report section, Total Cases by Location Found, you can download a report and see all the mistakes, search for them and fix them.
Species: This one is a little more difficult, but you want to go through and make sure all the species are filled in and spelt correctly. The easiest correction is Unknown. The term WRMD uses is unidentified, bird or unidentified, bat and so on. Another way to correct species is to search all records and export the Case # and Species into excel. Sort that list you should be able to easily see species that are not right. If it is even different by a capital letter then it is likely wrong. Remember, if the species was not selected from the menu and instead, typed in, the database does not recognize it. WRMD does do an audit of species and fix many of the mistakes, but not all of them.
Pending cases: Sometimes we miss an animal and it will be a house finch pending from February. You know this is not true, so it might take time to figure out what happened to it so that it can be recorded appropriately.
As I mentioned, it is easiest to do a little here and a little there, then it does not seem so daunting a task. If you need any help, as always just send us a message.