Home Forums Discussions Meaningful Use printing summary to PDF

We have just started with MU. I am looking at printing summaries. I have been told printing to PDFs which are archived for some period of time is enough. I'm just wondering how people do this efficiently, like down to the number of clicks required.

I'm not a provider, I'm the husband/IT person.

I see 3 possible ways to do this:
A) Most Recent Encounter: "Print Instructions (Summary)" button.
B) Summary Sheet: "Print Clinical Summary"
C) Summary Sheet: "Export Clinical Summary"

I have a PDF printer installed, but it is not the default, because the providers mostly print to a real printer in their office. That leads me to these 3 workflows for the 3 approaches:

A) Print Instructions (Summary):

1) Click "Print Instructions (Summary)"
2) Click Preview since our PDF printer is not the default
3) Click YES for "Save a copy of this correspondence" (?)
4) Click X to close the Letter since we don't care about it
5) Click Print on CCD which pops up
6) Click non-default PDF Printer on print dialog
7) Click Print
8) PDF dialog seems to have default filename with patient's name and some number, so that is good no typing
9) Click Save
10) Click Exit

B) Print Clinical Summary:

1) Click Print Clinical Summary button
2) Select Encounter from dropdown, but maybe default is generally ok?
3) Click Preview
4) Click Print
5) Click non-default PDF printer
6) Click Print
7) Click Save
8) Click Exit

C) Export Clinical Summary:

1) Click Export Clinical Summary
2) Select date from dropdown or keep default
3) Click "..." to selection location
4) Click desktop
5) Click OK
6) Click Export

I did verify that Export ticks up the Numerator, so that qualifies the same as printing I believe. That seems fastest, least clicks and also no wait for a preview.

Mentioned elsewhere on this board that just previewing was enough, but this did not work for me:

1) Click Print Clinical Summary (from Summary Sheet)
2) Click Preview
3) Click Exit

That is I checked the MU Wizard before and after, and it did not register.

Now if the whole PDF route doesn't work I was thinking of getting one of these:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/looflirpa/shrinter.shtml

Anyway just wondering what people really do here to be efficient.

Another route of optimization is have the staff go in and do this once a day or something. But I understand it has to be done with a providers account, and currently staff don't use provider's accounts so not sure we want to break that rule.

Phillip,

I am doing a variation of B.

Instead of non default PDF I click on the Updox printer. Then my nurse will send the summary in the HIPAA compliant portal so the patient can access on smart phone or computer. ( I think there are 3 extra clicks this way).

However, if the patient does not have a portal I will print and send by mail or give in person.

In my opinion printing the CCD and giving to the patient is worthless and is un-understandable.

I always print up a med list on paper and give to patient at each encounter and a summary in the portal or by mail or in person, and find this to be much more informative and understandable than the CCD.

So I think for me that is about the most efficient approach.

I am not doing MU, but that is another discussion.

Philip, first let me tell you that I admire agree with the approach you're taking. It is worth the investment of time upfront. Having said that... we use the "preview" approach and the encounters are counted in the MU wizard.
Also, you might want to wait for V6.5 before investing much more effort since that version allows you to pick and choose which parts of the CCD you want to print. I am not sure how this works for MU, but you will now be able to select, for example, just the medications and recent results for the CCD rather than ALL the results and all of the other poorly formatted useless stuff in the CCD.

Jon so you do these steps:

1) Click Print Clinical Summary (from Summary Sheet)
2) Click Preview
3) Click Exit

And it works? I ran MU wizard before/after doing the steps, or at least attempted to, and it did not register. Whereas if I really printed to a PDF or did the export, it did register. But I may have made a mistake of course, but it was a pretty straightforward experiment. I'm wondering if you do something slightly different, but still only a preview.

I do exactly the steps above, and it gives me a green "OK" on the MU test.

We will give it a try again. I guess the only thing there is if you do an AC upgrade best check to see if the shortcut still works, since it seems like the kind of thing they might break (i.e. fix). But really ought to check on things after an upgrade anyway, to make sure everything in general is still being tracked. That seems like the MU nightmare is you get everything humming along at first, but then months later check your stats and turns you something was not getting tracked.

Other than that approach I think exporting feels the fastest.

I still wonder if anyone has their staff go in and bulk-print a day at a time? That has its own complications, but at least the doctor doesn't have to do it.

Talking about counting clicks I wonder if anyone has counted how the number of clicks, or just the amount of time, that goes up per patient with MU? What is this costing us? Do people feel it is worth they funding, what about when the funding is over?

Philip,
Sorry I didn't reply earlier. I do this at the end of the encounter, so I don't use the summary page; I do it from the encounter page, but the process is basically the same. And they are counted.
When are you running these? Are you aware that the MU criteria state that the summary must be provided within 3 days of the visit. This is tracked, so if your wife sees the patient today but you print/preview in 4 days, it will not register.