Importing Theatre Lists from Documents and Labels

Importing Theatre Lists from Documents and Labels

Background, privacy and some important caveats

Cutting Edge now supports extracting data from theatre lists to assist you to create your invoices! This function is a tremendous time saver especially for anaesthetists and assistant surgeons, eliminating much of the onerous work of rekeying all the data from surgeons' list into CE. 

The CE List Importer automatically detects the layout of most common theatre list formats, and extracts the data into a temporary table for you to check prior to creating invoices. Typically the importer can achieve very high accuracy with common formats. The Importer supports a wide range of formats and applies some error checking. While the results are usually very good, the processing is very dependent on the quality of the documents, We therefore can't guarantee that the imported data are 100% accurate. You'll need to check the results for accuracy and may need to amend some details prior to submitting claims or issuing invoices. Please see our Terms and Conditions for further information. We take privacy issues very seriously. Our full Privacy policy is available here.

Preparing to use the importer

Before using the List Importer, you should ensure that you've already created the relevant surgeons and facilities in CE, as the List Importer will need to match on that information to create invoices. 

IMPORTANT NOTE: Each document should only contain cases for one list, that is:
  1. same surgeon
  2. same hospital
  3. same date of service
Each list should be a separate document.

Accepted file types

The List importer will accept the following file types:
  1. PDF
  2. Word Document (providing that the data is organised as a table)
and the following image formats, providing the image is clear:
  1. JPG
  2. PNG
  3. GIF
  4. TIFF
  5. BMP

Tips for best results

You will get the best results from clean PDFs generated from popular medical software packages. The reason is that these PDFs contain clearly formatted text in tables, which can be unambiguously read by the Importer. You may want to contact the surgeons' rooms to request lists in PDF format.

The List Importer can work with faxes or scanned documents which are saved as images in PDF or other formats. However be aware that the resulting quality is usually lower as the List Importer first has to convert the image to text using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology before extracting the text. Faxes and scans that are blurry, skewed or include handwriting will reduce the quality of the end result. If any characters fail the OCR they will be replaced with an asterisk (*) and a comment added to the Warnings section. If you see any asterisks in patient name, address etc, please carefully check the extracted data prior to creating invoices.

We can also work with pages of hospital labels, provided they are neatly arranged down the left-hand side of a page without overlap, preferably with no handwriting on the labels. Be aware that these labels may not contain all the information typically found on the surgeon's theatre list e.g. date of operation, name of hospital etc. Data imported from this format will require additional checking and some data entry.

Some lists can't be imported at all - you should get an error message in this case. We generally don't support typed lists in non-standard formats, though may be able to extract some data. If you have a particular format you would like to assess for suitability you can either email it to us or attempt to import it.

How to import a list

First save the file to a folder where you can easily locate it, such as the Downloads folder. The file should contain only the theatre list, no consent forms or admission paperwork etc. Remove these before attempting to import.

In CE, if you have more than one provider at your site, be sure to change to that provider before attempting an import.

Go to the List Importer page. If you have imported files before you can see a list of imported documents not yet turned into invoices. By clicking on the "Show Imported Lists" button at the top right of the screen you can also see a list of files you've already completed.



To start a new scan, click on the + icon. This will bring up a dialogue box where you can either click the grey area to open your file explorer and select the files you wish to import, or you can drag and drop the files into the grey area from your file explorer. You can import multiple lists at the same time, however you can only import lists relevant to the provider you currently have selected, attempting to import lists for multiple providers at once may result in invoices being created under the wrong provider if the process is completed.





The List importer will do some preliminary checks and if all is well with the document will begin the extraction process. Depending on the quality and length of the document this may take somewhere between 30 seconds to a few minutes to complete. The document processing happens in the background. This means you can stay on the page until you see the results appear or import another list or even navigate away from this page if you want to do other work in CE. An on-screen notification will appear when the document has been processed, so you can go back to the List Importer page to review the results.



Following a successful import, the page will populate with the surgeon and hospital details at the top of the page; a list of the patients with their fund details in the middle section of the page; and a section with more details on each case at the bottom of the page.


At this stage no invoices have been created, this is a step where you can check the extracted details for accuracy before proceeding, and edit patient details if necessary.

Checking the imported data 

The header of results page has details relevant to the entire list.


Surgeon: If CE has been able to exactly match one of the surgeons in your database, there will be a green surgeon icon and the surgeon's name from CE will be displayed.

A red icon (  ) indicates no match was found and will display the surgeon's name from the file. Click on the icon or name to bring up a list of the surgeons available for this provider. Once you select a surgeon from that list, the software will remember your choice and use it for future lists from the same surgeon. If you make a mistake, click on the icon again and choose the correct surgeon.


Hospital: If CE has been able to exactly match to one of the hospitals in your database, there will be a green hospital icon and the hospital's name from CE will be displayed.

A red icon(  ) indicates no match and will display the name found on the file. Click on the icon or name to bring up a list of the facilities available for this provider. Once you select a facility from that list, the software will remember your choice and use it for future lists. Because the name of the hospital may vary slightly depending on the surgeon, CE can remember a number of aliases to improve the matching over time.


Date: will be green unless the date extracted from the list is more than 2 years in the past, as it's not be possible to lodge electronic claims in this case.
Check the date and amend if necessary.


Patient Details then follow in a scrollable table, in the order from the printed list. More details for the patient currently selected in the list are shown in the bottom section.

Import: This column is ticked by default if the provider is an anaesthetist. For assistant surgeons, if item numbers were detected this column is ticked only for operations with assistable items. Prior to creating invoices you can confirm which cases to include using the check boxes in this column. Rows that are not selected will have a pink background.​

Name, sex, date of birth and Medicare details: Carefully compare these to the original list and check for accuracy.
Name, sex and date of birth can be edited by double-clicking on the field in the top section of the List Importer page or on the invoice once it's created.
Not all imports will pick up the IRN, you can edit the Medicare details on the bottom details section of the List Importer page or on the invoice. 

Fund and Fund Number: Due to the variability in text and abbreviations used in different files, this is the most challenging factor to get correct, so please check carefully. The Importer will do its best to identify the fund from the available data. If there's a good match then CE displays a green Fund icon in the Health Fund Check column. Note that it will not always be possible to match the fund, or the match may be incorrect. A red icon in the Health Fund Check column indicates either that no matching fund was found or that this patient has a previous invoice but the fund details didn't match. The patient may have changed funds, or is covered by different insurance for this episode of care, or it may indicate an error with the import. You may click on the Health Fund Check icon or fund name to choose a fund from the list; or leave it to be resolved later on the invoice. If you choose a fund at this stage you can optionally save that association as an alias to be applied to future imports. If you leave the fund unchanged the invoice will show as Self Funded until corrected. 




Patient Check: This column informs you if the patient is already known in CE, matching on name and date of birth and other criteria. A green icon with a plus (insert new icon here) means it's a new patient, while an green icon without a plus (insert icon here) indicates that the patient has been entered before and this invoice will be linked to that patient. If several matching patients are found, you will see a red icon, and the patient will be excluded from the import. You will need to identify the correct patient in Cutting Edge and create the invoice manually.

Invoice Check: This column indicates if the importer has identified an existing invoice for this patient at the same facility on the same day. A green icon indicates a new invoice will be created, while a red icon indicates there is an existing, potentially duplicate invoice. The importer will not allow you to create a duplicate invoice. You will want to check this before proceeding. 

Template Check: (Anaesthetists only) This column indicates if you have linked one of your item templates to the main surgical item. For example if the surgeon's item is for a particular joint replacement and you have already created an item template in CE, then you can link the these so when the invoice is created it will be populated with your items.

Notes/Warnings: This column indicates if the import has captured patient notes, a yellow icon here prompts you to look at that section below. Should there be any errors with the import you will see a red icon, indicating that you should check the Warnings box below. An orange icon appears if only notes are present.

Fund & Contact Information: This tab shows patient fund details, address, phones, and email. Here you can also see the fund details from the file and the Matched fund in CE

Procedure Information: This tab shows a description of the procedure as extracted from the file. If MBS items were found on the document, these will be listed in this tab along with the current MBS  description. Anaesthetists can optionally choose one of your item templates to be used on the invoice when it's created. Your choice can be remembered to be used for this procedure/item in the future. 

Doctor Information: If the file includes information on other practitioners involved in the case, e.g. Anaesthetist, Assistant, GP or Referring Doctor, these will be displayed here along with contact details if any.

Creating the invoices

At this stage no invoices have been created in CE. Once you have:
  1. completed your careful review of the imported information 
  2. linked any templates to use
  3. indicated which cases require invoices by using the checkbox in the Import column 
then you are ready to go.

If the Invoice Check column indicates there are existing invoices you will not be able to proceed as the importer will not create duplicate invoices.

Click on the CREATE INVOICES button in the top right of the panel and accept the prompt to continue. The software will create new patient records where they don't yet exist, and new invoices for each case selected for import.

For anaesthetists if you have linked item templates then the invoices will be populated with those items and fees will be applied, otherwise the items will be blank.

For assistant surgeons, if surgical items were extracted from the file these will be entered and the appropriate multiple operation rule and fees will be applied.

Viewing the original document

Once you have imported the list into the software, you can check the imported file two ways:

Before creating the invoices: Once the list has been imported and you're looking at the list of invoices to be created, clicking the green icon to the right of the file name will open the imported file in a new tab:


On the invoice after creation: After the invoice has been created, a line in the history tab will have an entry containing the file used to import the list.


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