God, I guess this could be endless. I have the same pet peeve, except it is pretty much the opposite. The oral surgeon or ENT sends a perfectly healthy eight year old for a pre-op physical a month before the surgery. Like the kid can't have pneumonia a month later. And, why can't they do the pre-op. If the kid comes to the surgery wheezing, are they going to go by my note?
I also love it when the dentist calls wanting me to tell them if patient X can needs SBE. The reason: the patient told him or her he had a murmur. Well one thing I learned on rotation in my residency with the pediatric cardiologist is that EVERY child has a murmur. It's impossible not to have one to some degree. Why can't they prescribe the amoxicillin?
I think I had a patient leave once, because I bragged too much about my being passive-aggressive with a surgical office. They had sent the patient to me for the pre-op. I faxed then note with the H & P which read "OK for surgery." The office called me back and said they wouldn't do the surgery unless it said "Cleared for surgery." I already know what Leslie would say here. And, I said the same thing. I will not send another note. If you don't want to do the surgery, then don't. Of course, in the end, I would have had to if it meant the child didn't get the surgery she needed. But, I called the surgeon himself and when he heard the story he asked his staff and they told him the same thing. Then I heard him tell everyone that was completely ridiculous. But, I guess when I told the mother kind of off the cuff, she must have thought I had risked her daughter's welfare. Oh well.
As far as the Paperport. It's hard for me since I haven't used it. I can tell you how I do it.
All of our faxes come in as PDFs into a program, but it's just as well to say they come into an inbox. We open them and name them. If it is a refill request, given it is in Adobe, whoever opens it, uses the typewriter icon to make a check mark next to "yes refill it," and then write the number of refills. Finally, I use my signature stamp to sign it. I then choose the printer icon and print to fax. Then I save it and import it. If anyone else does it, then I open it, approve it and save it. I think you can do that pretty much in Paperport as well.
