Excel Video 67 is a practical example of how an anesthesiology practice uses VLOOKUP in two different tables to make sure they aren’t missing any patients. Every month the practice compares a hospital report of patients treated to a practice report of patients treated to make sure the practice hasn’t missed billing any patients, there aren’t any number transposition errors (234 vs 243), etc. VLOOKUP makes this comparison of hospital data to practice data very easy. I also used the IFERROR function we discussed earlier as a way to make patients that weren’t found in either list stand out. You could easily use conditional formatting, filter the list to find the errors (that’s what this practice does), sort the list by the VLOOKUP column, or a variety of other techniques to quickly find any missing patients from either list and fix the problem.
Thanks to the anesthesia practice for the practical example. I hope you find these examples helpful in your practice.
