Microsoft Excel
 

I know there has to be a way. I have a list of physician's names and all pending orders for that physician. So it looks something like this

face to face | patient | dr somebody| date
face to face | new pa | dr someone | date

So, I have a list of over 400 doctors, how can I tell excel to count and tell me how many times each doctor appears without manually highlighting and counter each individual doctor?

Pivot Table.

Highlight the column you want to make counts of (including the header row such as "DOCTOR"). Go to Insert -> Pivot Table, and just hit OK. On the right side, drag DOCTOR to the "Row Labels" and "Values" section at the bottom right. The Value will automatically switch to "Count of DOCTOR".

ERMERGERD, I swear I was looking at pivot table all day but couldn't figure out where I was supposed to drag the information from. Jeebus, thanks man.

Or you could just use COUNTIF depending on what your actual goal is.

I also looked at COUNTIF but everything I saw said you had to show exactly what you wanted it to count, which would require typing in each individual doctors names, right?

Yes. Like I said, it depends on what your actual goal is. It is, of course, possible to overcome this limitation, but it seems that the pivot table may work out better.

I've been looking for something like this for a long time, so I'm glad this thread happened.

Of course, TBH, Excel is the wrong tool for the job. With a relational database, you could easily extract this and more...

What is that exactly? I know there is a microsoft application that is specifically used for databases. I just cant remember the name.

MS Access

Lemme ask you this. I have about 60 patients I need to track authorization for. Authorization is what the insurance gives us to see a patient (like permission). Each patient is different. Their authorization expires within a 30, 60, 90 day period. I have 5 separate disciplines I am tracking for authorizations. For instance

Joe Somebody has 5 SN visits, 3 PT vists, and 8 OT vists. This auth is good from 10/10/14 to 12/8/14.

I need to be able to create something that is visually pleasing that makes it easy to tell when additional auth is required. Is that something Access would do better than excel?

Quite possibly. Access lets you create forms to view records (and joined records), rather than viewing a table. You can also create a query that would include the latest (of possibly many) authorizations for a patient.

Access can be a pain if you're trying to tightly control the procedure to enter information, but if you're currently using Excel, then it's an upgrade in terms of functionality easily added and usability.