Home Forums Discussions Meaningful Use Fullfilling Core Item 13: Clinical Summaries

What do people do about fulfilling the Core 13 requirement?? Do you really give all your patients a copy of the CCD after each visit?

In our experience patients find the information on the CCD confusing, poorly formatted, and even upsetting. The CCR is a much more readable and patient-friendly document--but it doesn't fulfill the Core 13 requirement (apparently).

We have posted a notice in our office, offering our patients a clinical summary of their encounter within 3 business days of the visit. Never had a taker.
A few months ago, Steven posted that he had prepared a letter, supplied each patient who received a summary. I believe the gist of it was that he was required to give out the summary, but it basically provided no useable information, and he asked them to speak up if they needed information about their visit.

I discovered that after you hit print patient summary-- hit preview (DON'T HIT PRINT TO DEFAULT PRINTER). Then you may choose to save or not save the summary to patient chart. Then hit the print box in the letter that pops up and ONLY a summary letter will print with whatever is in your plan section on it. That has turned out to be quite useful because I can put asthma plans, followup plans and Tylenol doses in there and it prints near the checkout window and patients pick it up as they leave. This method DOES NOT print the CCR which is truly confusing.
The above method is working to allow us to meet Core 13.
Lots of clicks involved though.

Thanks for the ideas, John and AJ. I used your approach for a while, AJ but got tired of all the clicks. I like your idea, John, of posting a sign.

In our office we set up the doctor's computer to a printer that no longer exists. Nothing gets printed and it still counts towards Core 13. You can also hit the teal tab multiple times for a single patient and each one counts (I did it for research purposes because for the 1 year MU we failed due to this Core...the ONLY thing we failed on). If patients really need the summary we can print one at the desk. We never hand the CCD to patients.

Some of those techniques sound like they wouldn't really fulfill the intent behind Core 13. They just jack up the numbers artificially.

We have an Updox portal for patients. When printing a CCD for the patient, we send it to the Updox printer. Then from Updox, we send it to the patient. No reams of paper wasted, not too many extra clicks.

The office staff is supposed to be doing this for every patient now. If they only do it 50% of the time, we'll meet the Meaningful Use criteria.

Notes from the relevant documentation:

The clinical summary can be provided through a PHR, patient portal on the web site, secure e-mail, electronic media such as CD or USB fob, or printed copy. If the EP chooses an electronic media, they would be required to provide the patient a paper copy upon request.

The EP must include all of the items listed under ?Clinical Summary? in the ?Definition of Terms? section that can be populated into the clinical summary by certified EHR technology. If the EP's certified EHR technology cannot populate all of these fields, then at a minimum the EP must provide in a clinical summary the data elements for which all EHR technology is certified for the purposes of this program:
- Problem List
- Diagnostic Test Results
- Medication List
- Medication Allergy List

So, those four items have to be included AT A MINIMUM. There's a big list of things that can be included, but those are the basics, and Amazing Charts handles that pretty darn well.

Have you seen the clinical summary that Meaningful Use requires, and AC provides? My patients have voted. The consensus is "less than useless".

I wanted to revive this thread as I have noticed a change since updating from version 6.3.3 to version 6.6.7. Since my upgrade about two months ago, I am no longer fulfilling the MU Core 13 clinical summary requirement.

In the prior version, I would simply click the teal button "print instructions (summary)" in the lower right of the screen. This would print out the summary and a CCR. It appears that in the new version, doing it this way is no longer counting toward the MU requirement.

Reviewing the "How do I achieve this in Amazing Charts" instructions, I think I now have to click on the summaries tab and then click the teal "print summary" button. I will try this today and rerun my MU report and see if this works. Almost two months of visits without counting any of the summaries I thought I did will be tough to make up but....

I am curious if anyone else has thoughts on the matter. Am I on the right track here.

There is also supposed to be a way to have clinical summaries sent automatically to those with an email address or portal account set up. I was not able to figure out the instructions and am seeking clarification from anyone out there.

Finally, while I remain as confused as anyone else about the new MU rules, I am under the impression that I can attest again this year for stage 1 using the previous stage 1 criteria, so it would need to be for a whole year rather than 90 days. Is this others' impression as well?

We just updated to Version 7.1.1 and now see 3 teal boxes to click in encounter screen, plan tab: declines patient summary, patient ed given, and print instructions (summary). What is the difference with these 3 boxes? Since all are teal, do all have to be clicked to meet MU? Do we print summary every time even if patient declines, so we would click both boxes? and if patient doesn't decline, leave box blank, but then a teal box is left blank.
We just want to make sure we are fulfilling MU Stage 2--why so many boxes??

Thanks for your advice

I have ended my participation with MU at this point, but here is my understanding:
1. The "declines patient summary" now gives you a way to NOT have the encounter counted in the Item 13 totals.
2. The "patient ed given" applies to Core Item 10.
3. The function of "print instructions" is unchanged.

That is just my assessment. Kate at AC knows this stuff inside and out; maybe she (or someone else at AC) will chime in with a more official answer....