PECS Overview

Patient registries have been used in health care for many years. However, with the development of the Chronic Care Model (CCM) and the adoption of the Model by many health care organizations, the need for a specific type of registry became apparent.

One of the components of the CCM is a Clinical Information System (CIS) that provides both the detailed clinical view of any patient's information and an overview of data from the entire patient population. The CCM registry allows the provider and the staff of the health center to deliver the appropriate care to a given patient, and also makes it easy to obtain information about all patients.

The Patient Electronic Care System (PECS) provides a Clinical Information System that allows health professionals to access information that is pertinent to an individual patient's care and to make queries against information for the entire patient population.

Downloading PECS

Community Health Centers participating in the Bureau of Primary Care's Health Disparities Collaboratives can download PECS and upgrades to PECS for free from the following website: http://aristos.com/pecs.htm

Only health centers participating in the collaboratives will be able to fully install and run the application, those health centers will receive individual passwords to complete the installation.

Who to contact for Questions on PECS

If you are a Midwest Health Center participating in the Health Disparities Collaboratives, you can contact either John Cahill at cahilljt@kspca.org or Dana Keilen at dkeilen@mpca.net.

If you are a Health Center participating in the Health Disparities Collaboratives from another region, please contact the IS specialist in your region for support.

If you are not a participating health center and you would like to know more about PECS you can send an email to: pecs@aristos.com

Working with PECS Reports

One of the most powerful and flexible features of PECS is the ability to create and run reports. The reports feature provides the ability to query the entire PECS database for information that summarizes a particular disease and for information about patients that meet specified criteria.

PECS provides two types of reports…a registry summary report for each disease condition and a spreadsheet report. The registry report summarizes data for a given disease for a group of patient records. The spreadsheet reports produces lists of patients that meet certain criteria. The criteria for which patients are included in reports is set by filters. Spreadsheet reports show columns of data and you can select which data columns are included and the order in which they appear.

From the Reports screen you are able to run a report, create a new report, edit an existing report and delete a report. PECS also allows you to specify filters for a report, which can be a powerful way to query the databases to get information that meet the criteria you specify.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

How do I send in my monthly reports?
Answer: Complete Guide to Reporting

How do I copy and paste my Excel graphs into PowerPoint for our storyboards?
Answer: Copy & Past Graphs into PowerPoint

How do I create a customized query?
Answer: Create a Customized Query

How do I know what the abbreviations on the Encounter Note stand for?
Answer: Encounter Note Abbreviations

How do I annotate my Excel spreadsheet?
Answer: Annotate Excel Spreadsheets

How do I know which reports are automatically available in PECS?
Answer: PECS Reports

How do I use a PECS report for mail merge?
Answer: Using a PECS Report for Mail Merge