Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Tracking patients

How are you guys tracking patients? How do assure every patient has been informed at the age of 50 that they should get their colonoscopy, etc.

For me, I have started a bariatric surgical program and am trying to figure out how to integrate AC into the process. Many insurances require 500 different things prior to sending off the patient for pre-approval. Is there a good way to track where patients are in the process with AC?

There are bariatric specific EMRs that will do this I'm told but I also do a large amount of general surgery and use AC for those.

Tracking patients is a mystery. We're using paper for it right now and I can see patients getting lost. Obviously, we make the patients responsible for their own health but reminders would be nice as well as knowing where a patient is in the process.

I am not certain exactly if this feature of AC would help you, but I can think of two possibilities. Maybe you have thought of these already and they just wouldn't be feasible for you.

1) In a patient chart under "Summary Sheet" to the middle right is "Tracked Data/Flowsheets." You can input specific values you wish to keep track of.

I use these fields to keep abreast of health main items during my routing annual physicals. I track colonoscopy, DRE/PSA, mammography, bone dens, paps, cholesterol. I don't record the values of the test but rather I indicate the date the test was done and when it is due next.

2) Import an Excel spreadsheet into the "Imported Items" section and use this to track the items for each patient that you are currently using pen/paper to track.

These are just my thoughts, but as a F.P. I don't really understand what exactly you are tracking or exactly how you need to track. So maybe these ideas are helpful, maybe not? Let me know if these solutions fit your practice model.

Thanks Adam. I'll research it a bit more this week.

What I would like to do is not lose patients while they are going through pre-op work-up. So a patient will need a 6 month pre-op weight loss program, a nutrition eval, a psych eval, an UGI or EGD, etc.

I'm wondering if each month I could pull up all patients who are going through the pre-op and which steps they have yet to complete. I think I can do this so we'll see.

Also, I do a large amount of endoscopy and I'm currently having a reminder pop up in my MA's inbox when the patient is due for their 2,5, or 10 year repeat colonoscopy or 1,2,3 year f/u EGD for Barrett's. This seems to work although it fills my MA's box.

Travis:

I think I have a pretty easy fix to the problem but it doesn't involve AC. I do sports medicine and I track all my patients and what diagnosis they have, what my four word treatment plan is (HEP, physical therapy, NSAIDs) and when their next follow up is due. When they check out, my front desk staff inputs this into an excel sheet. They use columns:

Name, Last Visit, Diagnosis, Plan, Next Visit

we sort this by keeping all patients that are not active for stuff at the bottom, and on top have the patients that need to go get MRI's, testing, etc and odn't have f/u's or if they need a f/u but coudln't make it yet. In the middle section we have the ones that have a plan and a follow up made. so that every morning the front desk uses the sort function in excel to bring the days patients to the top.

And every couple days my front desk girl looks at who should have followed up and who should have gotten an MRI or if someone needed f/u to check on them if they had a concussion.

I know it seems like a lot of work but really it isn't once you get the initial people in the sheet!

And my office is a staff of me and my one front desk girl, kim.

Good luck Travis

Tracked data/Flowsheets seems to be what I can use for tracking this data. But, is there someway to search through all my patients that I am tracking certain data on?

So if I track that a paient is a bariatric patient, is there a way I can search my entire patient population to only pull patients that are tracked as bariatric? I have entered the data as "Bariatric", and the value is recorded as "Y" or "N" as to whether they have had surgery yet or not. I use the date for the surgery date if it is scheduled.

I would like to be able to pull a list of all patients who are "bariatric" but have not been scheduled for surgery "N".

Is the tracked data even searchable?

I keep hoping that AC will improve the health maintenance section so the rules can be expanded. Right now we can exclude a HM item by diagnosis, but not trigger it with different rules (like, high-risk polyp needing short interval colonoscopy). The HM section seems to be the perfect place to do these things, but so far it is not useful.

I believe you could track "Bariatric" as the test and "1" for no and "2" for yes and follow your pt that way on the Data Flowsheet

I write the values into the first column of the tracked list along with the item I am tracking in the admin section. Some folks use numbers, I just use a word to group the items:

Lipids 3-Trig <150 145 12/20/10

This allows for a nice printout to give the patients.
Another column for the values would be nice.

I understand that these items are tracked per patient. What I want is to track for my entire patient population and be able to search them. I can't figure out how to search things in the tracked data/flowsheet area. I just want to pull every patient that I'm tracking a certain value whether it be bariatric or lipids. Is that even possible?