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How do we record the patient reminders measure if we are making a phone call or sending a message thru the patient portal. Last year we only sent letters which counted because we were in stage 1. Now that we are in stage 2 and have to send by preferred method of contact, I dont know how this records. We started using televox to make these automated reminder calls, but I dont understand how to push this info to the CQR. Any helpful hints? Also helpful hints on how to make it record when we send a patient reminder thru the patient portal
Centricity EMR 9.8
CPS 10
Posted : April 15, 2015 5:52 am
As I understand the current EMR version, there is a special file MUACTIVITYLOG that records certain events (like this one) with a code of '3'. I am not aware of a way to easily accomplish this since the only way I know of to get this to happen is to run Inquiries and print something.
All that said, news over the past weekend regarding changes to MU standards may make this a non-issue.
Take a look at the full 200-page document.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2015-08514.pdf
Posted : April 15, 2015 6:16 am
My understanding is Televox does not count as it is reminding patients of an appointment that already exists. As far as I can tell the only way to have anything count is to print out of Inquiry. With that being said you can print it out of Inquiry and send it using a product like ACM from Kryptiq. The key is to have the "contact by" in registration set to Letter.
Good Luck,
Steph B.
Posted : April 15, 2015 6:42 am
This was something that I have on my list to try to find out how other users were going to get this done when I go to CHUG/Live. The biggest hold up we have is that it has to be delivered in the patient’s preferred method of contact and Phone is the preferred method of contact for 95% of our patients while letter is the preferred method of contact for .025% of our patients with e-mail running about twice that of letters. The only way GE is going to count it is if the preferred method of contact is Letter and you print the letter from the actionable folder. So... you can keep a tally of all your phone calls or produce your own report, but we don't know what it looks like to try to attest to everything using CQR but this one measure? I am glad they are looking at revamping the Meaningful Use guidelines, but GE has had to come up with so many work-flows to try to get things counted I don't see how they can step that back. Although I do wish this was one they would. We even have case managers who call patients for all of this and we came up with a letter that we created for them recapping what the conversation was and put it in the Actionable folder..... didn't work : (
Posted : April 15, 2015 10:27 am
GE has totally missed the boat, in my humble opinion, for this measure. It says to deliver the reminder by the patient's preferred way, not by the way that GE has decided to report this!! We too have an automated system that has offered to work with us to deliver these preventive reminders in the way the patients truly want to be reminded, but to get them to count, we would have to screw up the way the patient wants to be reminded for even just regular appointment reminders.
GE you get an F on this measure, in my book!
Posted : April 16, 2015 7:14 am
My understanding is the Patient Reminders for at least 10% of patients with 2 or more visits has been dropped in the new Stage 2 proposal just released for 2015.
Is that how others understand it? It still may be useful for some practices to send reminders, but in our specialty Patient Reminders did not make a lot of sense.
I am very glad CMS has taken it out of the Stage 2 MU requirement.
Mike
Posted : April 17, 2015 4:31 am
https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2015-08514.pdf
PAGE 41 TABLE 3: OBJECTIVES AND MEASURES IDENTIFIED BY PROVIDER TYPE
WHICH ARE REDUNDANT, DUPLICATIVE OR TOPPED OUT
I sure do hope this passes! We have <1% of our patients with a "preferred" method of contact for Letter.
Posted : April 21, 2015 4:53 am
dduschel - I would love to know what kind of response you get at Live. Unfortunately we aren't able to attend. Our biggest concern is the inquiry that GE has said to do...sounds like it would be straight forward, however, how can we pull patients who have had 2 visits in the last year just doing an inquiry? And according to the meaningful use guide from GE, the patient can't have an appointment already scheduled.
Fingers crossed that CMS will drop this one measure, but have to be prepared just in case they don't. We are also looking to probably use the system who is doing our regular appt reminders and then using their reports to for the measure, we just have to have a way to pull a correct patient list. Thanks, Linda
Posted : April 21, 2015 8:16 am
I missed the part about them not having an appointment scheduled; we are multispecialty that won't work, some of our people have their appointments booked out 6 months in advance. Ugh!
Posted : April 21, 2015 8:31 am
