Notifications
Clear all
Topic starter
How are you handling patients leaving your office without picking up their handout at the reception desk?
Thanks - Tim
Posted : May 9, 2012 6:57 am
Simple. We shred it. That's been our institutional policy. My understanding is that the requirement is that it be available, and the patient is free to refuse, forget, ignore, etc.
It might be interesting to track what percent are taken home over time, and use this as a measure of how good a job we are doing with the task of providing data useful to and desired by the patient in a format that is patient-friendly.
Sorry if I sound snarky, but you hit upon a pet peeve of mine: that the requirements for MU (and other things) often end up with a response that is expert at satisfying the requirement but useless in any real sense.
Peter 
Posted : May 9, 2012 10:24 am
Topic starter
I don't find it "snarky" at all. It is in theory ... a great idea for the patient... the process is combersome for the provider who already is cramped for time. Printing paper in the "electronic" world... hmmm. We have been doing it for about 8 weeks now and have printed over 1200 of them, 95 have been left behind due to various reasons...busy reception area and the patients don't want to wait again...
Really concerned about the "must" have electronic access for the patient to review their chart (that module) will be a huge expense. 😀
- Looking forward to hearing what others are doing too. -
Posted : May 9, 2012 10:55 pm
Just make sure you name it *Patient Instructions. We learned the hard way that various iterations of "what" was out there were never counted. Such as "Visit Summary," "Clinic Visit Summary," etc.
We also discovered the form *Patient Instruction with various modifiers and discovered that it does not work for the requisite report.
Posted : May 14, 2012 6:28 am
In mine, if I put the * I front of patient instructions, won't count it. Once I removed that, it started documenting in the report.
Posted : May 14, 2012 7:06 am
ErnieT said:
In mine, if I put the * I front of patient instructions, won't count it. Once I removed that, it started documenting in the report.
We ran into various problems with the naming convention and the only thing that seems to work is *Patient Instructions. When I contacted GE support, one of their engineers noted from my screen capture that many of our former reports were named *Patient Instruction, and the absence of a plural wouldn't count.
Posted : May 14, 2012 10:35 pm
Topic starter
I actually run the CVS report in centricity CORE MU reports and it is gathering the "printing" information. - who thought that the printing and in some cases postage would be a good thing in EMR use?
Keep your thoughts and experience coming my way. Tim
Posted : May 14, 2012 10:37 pm
tward said:
I actually run the CVS report in centricity CORE MU reports and it is gathering the "printing" information. - who thought that the printing and in some cases postage would be a good thing in EMR use?
Keep your thoughts and experience coming my way. Tim
Indeed. We had large debates over whether or not clicking the button "Handout given to patient" had any impact on the report printing process. I kept getting hung up on the fact that the release notes stated that the report evaluated a print audit log, which generally wouldn't scrutinize documents that were printed. After initiating a few calls with GE, I was assured by their Tier 2 support that the Clinical Visit Summary report only evaluated the audit log and didn't consider chart elements whatsoever. We had so many MD's resistant to "clicking one more box," and it turns out that it didn't have any bearing on the report at all.
Still is best practice, however, since you might find yourself performing a manual audit. It looks as if we've had bad document mapping in the past and a number of our providers would have attested for MU. I am still debating the efficacy of such a manual audit.
Posted : May 14, 2012 10:41 pm
Topic starter
I also run an inquiry…looking for documents text containing: Printed Handout: – NECA – Clinical Visit Summary
and clinical date is on or after (the date we started doing them )
and type is – internal corrospondence. That way you do get an overall number you can then drill it down adding the responsible provider / or final signature by…
just a thought. (I do follow the other CVS – MU report while I am in wait to begin "attestation")
Posted : May 14, 2012 11:07 pm
I also run an inquiry for internal correspondence:patient handouts within the necessary date range in order to be able to show more accurately how many handouts we generate for our patients.
For some reason we thought our fate revolved around MQIC and Crystal Reports and it was a huge relief to discover we were incorrect in our thinking. MQIC and Crystal Reports are only a few of the tools available to assist us in our quest for MU and as long as we have ironclad documentation showing that we have met the objectives life is good.
Recalls and a few other measures have some "gaps" in MQIC and Crystal Reports but we are able to pull other reports showing our numbers are solid.
Posted : May 31, 2012 1:59 pm
Topic starter
Great information. Keep the comments coming. Tim 
Posted : May 31, 2012 10:47 pm
tward said:
I actually run the CVS report in centricity CORE MU reports and it is gathering the "printing" information. - who thought that the printing and in some cases postage would be a good thing in EMR use?
Keep your thoughts and experience coming my way. Tim
All,
We ran into this and learned the hard way also after several calls to GE we learned
Name must start with "*Patient Instructions" then you can add what ever you want
If you didnt do this this you will need to modify the crystal report to capture the handout used for meaningful use ours was Patient Instructions Meaningful Use, then re run your report and you will be fine to report those numbers.
We asked GE to update the material they have released as it is not clear you must have the * , many of us use the * or other symbols to organize our list as you all know you cant organize except alpha sort with out the symbols.
Verline
Posted : June 5, 2012 12:40 am
