Marty,
If I want to know that the staffer contacted the patient and told them to have the test, lab, visit, etc., then I send the message to the patient and cc it to myself. I save the one that comes to me to the chart (which documents that it was ordered). The staffer is instructed to reply to me by hitting "task complete" when they have spoken to the patient.
On the other hand, if you want to document that the patient actually had the lab or test, and you have seen the result, I think that generating a reminder is the only way to do that.
I am interested to hear if others have better ways of doing this.
