Save time by letting patients set pre-visit agenda through EHR, patient portals
Physician Practice Insider, May 2, 2017
Give your patients the opportunity to set an agenda ahead of their office visits and you may witness improved patient engagement and clinical outcomes — while also saving yourself a significant amount of administrative time.
A new study appearing in the Annals of Family Medicine found that “collaborative agenda-setting” — or allowing patients to add to the visit note and pinpoint the issues or problems they would like to cover before an office visit — improved communication, helped prioritize the visit, and gave providers greater understanding of the patient’s concerns.
“Our study shows that overwhelmingly patients like it,” reports lead author McHale Anderson with the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. The approach — based on the Open Notes initiative that seeks to expand patients’ access to their medical records — can help reduce redundancy by limiting the number of times a patient has to repeat the reason for her visit.
Think about what happens when a patient makes an appointment, it’s excess repetition, says Anderson. “You tell the receptionist, you tell the receptionist again and then you tell the medical assistant,” he sighs. Opening up an agenda “puts everyone in the clinic on the same page when the patient walks in the door,” he adds.
Getting a pre-planned agenda also can rev up the efficiency of your practice by saving your providers substantial documentation time, notes Joann Elmore, M.D., a practicing internist at the Adult Medicine Clinical at Harborview and professor of medicine at the University of Washington, Seattle.
As co-author of the study, Elmore sought a fresh way to improve the clinical experience at her office. “I was hoping to actively engage the patient but also save time, to be perfectly honest,” she says. By having the patient submit the subjective portion of the required documentation for the chart, “that would save me time as a provider,” says Elmore, who adds that she was often finishing documentation in the evenings and weekends.
“The patient’s contribution to the medical record is an untapped universe,” says Dan Mingle, president of practice consultancy Mingle Analytics in South Paris, Maine. “To whatever extent the patients can contribute to record-keeping, that can take the burden off [physicians’] shoulders.”
This article originally appeared on Part B News. Log in to read the full, detailed article here.
Related Products
Most Popular
- Articles
-
- Math can be tricky: TJC corrects ABHR storage requirement
- Air control equals infection control
- Don't forget the three checks in medication administration
- Note similarities and differences between HCPCS, CPT® codes
- Five ways to safeguard your patients' valuables
- The consequences of an incomplete medical record
- Q&A: Primary, principal, and secondary diagnoses
- OB services: Coding inside and outside of the package
- Skills of effective case managers
- Practice the six rights of medication administration
- E-mailed
-
- Air control equals infection control
- OSHA HazCom updates include labeling, SDS requirements
- Plan of Care Supports Documentation of Homebound Status
- Note similarities and differences between HCPCS, CPT® codes
- Note from the instructor: CMS clarifies billing guidelines on proper billing for drugs in a single-dose or single-use vial, including billing for discarded drugs
- Neurological checks for head injuries
- Modifiers and medical necessity
- Follow these tips to properly report bladder catheter codes
- Five ways to safeguard your patients' valuables
- Differentiate between types of wound debridement
- Searched