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Complete a checklist before approving new forms

HIM Connection, May 11, 2004

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The medical records committee at McAlester (OK) Regional Health Center approves all hospital forms that become part of the permanent medical record, and it's easy for the members to get sidetracked from their primary goal.

"Often, our committee members get caught up in critiquing the form's intended use and not actually the form itself," says Glennda Gore, RHIA, director of HIM.

To get and keep the committee on the right track, Gore developed a forms-approval checklist. Each time a new form is submitted for approval, the committee simply reviews the form to make sure all the items on the checklist are included. "The checklist helps us stay focused," she says.

The checklist also serves as a communication tool with the department submitting the form for approval. "If we found something missing, we simply return the form along with the checklist so that they can fix the problem," Gore explains. Each department has a copy of the approval checklist so they know what is required before they submit a form. That's been a real timesaver, Gore says.

The committee members like using the checklist. "Although we try to look at the form's purpose and whether it is a duplicate of a similar form, we really just need to focus on the uniformity of the form. Is the patient label section always in the same place? Is the hospital logo used? Does the form have a title?"

The checklist was actually the first step in improving forms throughout the facility. McAlester is considering the creation of a forms committee that would include the facility's forms vendors. Some departments are using forms that have poor quality because they have been photocopied so many times, Gore says. This new committee would be responsible for handling such problems.

This week's excerpt is adapted from Medical Records Briefing, the monthly newsletter that provides the best new ideas in health information management and a complete set of professional resources to benefit the medical records department. Click here to order or learn more.

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