Introduction

Under the Cases menu item, you will find the part of the web site where to organize input of all your cases for self assessment. The following measurements types are available: Treatment Process (TP), Treatment Outcome (TO), Patient Satisfaction Evaluation (PS) and indices (PAR, ICON and IOTN. ABO-OGS will be available in a later version).
The cases to be entered in ESAS are organized in what we call a case group. This group's mission is to be a top level (parent) for a specific group of patients and all the evaluation data entered for these patients. In this way different types of measurements that you are entering can share the same list of patients, and then will be logically linked together.

How to enter cases

If you have a group of e.g. 20 patients, and you will like to use ESAS to evaluate your orthodontist practice for these patients, then you login to ESAS, enter the "Cases" menu item, and then you will be ready to start the evaluation job. You are now in the Case Group Overview.

This overview contains all cases that have been entered. If this is the first time you use ESAS, the overview contains only one item, an uninitialized case group. In that case ESAS has no data from before. If you have used ESAS before, an uninitialized case group will also appear in the top of the overview in which for the rest only closed historical case groups are available. In this way you will always be ready to start entering new cases.

Click the "Initalize" button, and then you will be lead through the following steps: 1) Edit/confirm your current practice state, and 2) Enter the patient list. After confirming these two steps, the case group has been initialized, and you are ready to add your cases for evaluation to the new patient list. It is possible to enter all patients ID's that you want to be in one case group in one term, but it is also possible to enter all data of one patient ID at a time. You will be able to change both your patient list and the practice information later, which will be the two first items in the case groups. At this point, the items below will be the available measurements types. Each type has it own line in the overview, and you will be able to see its status (date of initialization, date of last change, whether it is complete or not, etc). When no data has been entered, these items will only have available the "Initialize" button. Click on this, and you will enter the part of ESAS where you can enter data to the given measurements type. Here you can browse from patient to patient by the browse buttons at the top, and register answers to the questions. ESAS will check that you enter answers to all questions. If not completed, ESAS will tell you that parts are missing. It is important that you answer all questions for all patients, otherwise it will not be part of the database for statistics, and you will not be able to do any comparisons to other orthodontists. When all patients are handled, click on the "Done" button, and you will return to the case group overview. If you have clicked 'Done' before you completed all questions for all patients, the overview will show the statement "Open / Incomplete", which means that this measurements type record is still open for input and that it is not completed. If you have answered all questions, the statement will show "Open / Complete", which means that it is completed, but is still open for changes.

It is your own choice which measurements types to initialize and enter data into. If you are not familiar with the indices, you don't have to use them. Use the types that give you what you want for your evaluation, and nothing more.

When all measurements types that you wanted to enter are completed, and there are no more data or changes to be added, you can finalize the case group. (Click the "Finalize" button). This means that the case group and all its cases will be closed and locked for further input. If no finalization is done manually, the case group will be automatically closed 6 months after initialization.

For postgraduate students the case group will remain open for the whole of their training period.

Making changes to an existing and open case group

If you have initialized and entered data into a case group, as described above, you will be able to update it afterwards. You can do changes/corrections and add new patients. Notice that if you add new patients to a case group, all the measurements types that had been entered and completed from before will be put to the stage "Incomplete". This is because a new patient has been added and no question has been answered for this new patient yet. You must therefore go through each of the measurements type and complete all questions for the new patient to put the stage back to completed.

Case history

As described in the section "How to enter cases", the case group overview contains all historical data. All data you have put into ESAS are stored and available. The current/latest cases are in the top of the overview, and the oldest are in the bottom of the list. If the latest case group is still open for input, then this will be the top item. If the latest group is finalized and closed, the top item will be an uninitialized case group ready for a new group of patients.

Corrections of older data

If you have older case groups, that are finalized and closed, you will be able to do corrections in case of errors. When entering measurements types, you will get the message that the cases are closed, but corrections can be done by clicking the button "Open for changes". You then will be warned continuously by ESAS that you are now editing a closed case group, and that any changes are for corrections only. No new data are meant to be added. Older case groups are historical, and therefore not open for new patients or new measurements cases.

If you newly have finalized a case group, and it is less than six months since initialization, you will be able to reopen the case group to do changes and also to add new patients. A case group, and all its belonging patients and measurements types, has a default period of six months from initialization where you can work on it. After six months the case group is automatically closed, and the only changes that can be done are error corrections.

Delete/remove/undo

You are able to delete items at different levels. You can delete a single record of measurements type, e.g. a PAR index, but still keep all the patients and all entered records of all other measurements types. And you can delete a single patient in the patient list, or you can delete an entire case group. When deleting a case group, all items are deleted, that means the patient list and all records of measurements types. Notice that deleted in ESAS does not mean that the data are gone for always. ESAS is deleting by putting it to an deactivated status, so the data is hidden and not a part of the active database and statistics anymore. If any data was deleted by a mistake, you will be able to undelete, and activate it again. In the bottom of the overview you will have an checkbox saying "Show deleted". If this box is checked, the overview will show all deleted groups or quality measurement items, and you will also be able to reactivate them by clicking the "Undelete" button.