Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Updox Forms - How to use them?

To the Updox experts out there...

As we have gotten into telemedicine with Updox as our video interface, we are using the portal much more frequently.
We like to have our patients complete and return a medical questionnaire before visits. What is the best way to have my staff store and transmit these forms to patients for completion and return prior to telemed visits?

Hi Jon
Use the Form Management section of Updox in the Admin menu. The results will show up in the Updox workspace and you can then import it into II as a PDF.

We want our patients to be able to access and complete a fillable form. What is the best way to do that? Create a "fillable" pdf and store in Updox? Have it on a practice website?

Suggestions appreciated.

For a fillable PDF, I would email the file to the patient. I had told a patient to access the PDF link from our website, but they filled out the PDF on their browser instead of saving it to their computer first. So when they go to save the completed PDF, the fields were not saved. If you email it to them, they have open it in their PDF software and save.

There are lots of options with creating forms from printed documents.
I was doing this with adobe acrobat over 20 years ago for seminar registrations.
If it is a paper form you can scan it.
As a word document you can import it.
Or create one from scratch
You can send them as email or place them online as a web page to fill out.

The trick is how to you want to receive the data.
And how to handle it to import to your records
As a email it will usually just send the input by the user or as a file saved somewhere that you designate.
Import it into a spreadsheet
Some work online with a report option to view submissions.

There are lot's of options today and not just acrobat.
One other is jotform.com
Besides a pdf form
It also has a tool to create a full html form with GUI interface for both options.
For the jotform option You could start with the limited free plan to get your form the way you want it, Then switch to a paid plan to get rid of the branding.

There are lot's of other apps but most of them are specifically for wordpress..
If you are using that then great.
If not then your choices are limited.

I think the issue is modern day browsers.
Firefox works well with acrobat reader but not edge.
But that means the user has to install it prior.
With today's browsers they all have there own acrobat reader flavor, Just not adobe.
But they are not compatible with pdf forms
Not sure about apple safari.

Hence why a online form would work better for all than a emailed form.

Thanks for the input, and hopefully we can continue the conversation. I would think that MANY people are doing this in some way, shape, or form, so I hope others will contribute their methods.

As Ruben says, the key is "The trick is how to you want to receive the data.
And how to handle it to import to your records".

1. Keep in mind that regular email is NOT HIPAA compliant, so we can comfortably email them (or have them download) a blank form, but when they return it, a portal or encrypted email is preferred. That is why my initial questions were geared towards how people use Updox (which IS the portal for AC... such as it is).

2. Once the form comes back, we currently scan the form into imported items, and manually enter the demographics and some clinicals (e.g. meds, allergies) into fields in AC. Updox has a form creator but it is clumsy and would turn our 3 pages of questions into about a dozen pages of mostly "yes/no" fields.

So.... I am thinking we create a fillable pdf... we can email it to the patient or send in Updox, but then what? It gets complicated unless we just have them email it back to us. But what about HIPAA?

I would think if your website is https and the form is online to fill out that would be acceptable for HIPAA.
It is acceptable for online transactions.

Screw HIPAA. Here we are in 2020, and we still are tied to a fax machine. And, that is supposed to be HIPAA compliant. There are ways that you can use email that meets HIPAA requirements, but it is cumbersome and dependent a lot on the other end. Faxes don't always make it. They can take forever to sent 100 pages, whereas email can send an attachment in seconds. There just needs to be a tradeoff. All of this HIPAA stuff gets in the way of patient care.

And, before HIPAA, I think there was still confidentiality. Oh, and fax machines have been Internet-capable for years, but it would mean the person on the other side having Internet-capable fax. It would have to be a mandate.

So how do I easily and reliably provide a blank form to my patients, have them complete it and return it to me?

Not sure if it would be HIPAA compliant. But, you probably need to use some type of 3rd party software. If I recall when I get something from Survey Monkey, I can only fill it out and click enter at the end. The results would go to you. You can set up skip page and skip question logic, etc.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/pricin...rce2=take-a-tour&ut_source3=megamenu

But, the fine print says you must use three users. Would have to negotiate.

There are paid services that do it. I don't remember the name but I saw one geared for pediatrics.

If you want forms that return a completed "look" like the paper ones you're used to (this is what we wanted), fillable PDF is the only way.

The problem with fillable PDF is patients can't do it on their mobile devices. I thought about creating an online form that has a similar layout to our paper forms so that it can work on mobile, but then it will be too hard to read - the text will be too small. But those short Updox forms work well on mobile.

Most of our patient population would use their phone for internet - they don't necessarily have computers to do fillable PDF.

Jon,

I designed a lot of forms several years ago, the medicare wellness, script/pharmacy refill request, demographics, but most people don't use them. A few do, but I think you have to have staff remind them in person and by text or both to fill them out, because the forms are available once the patient signs onto their portal. So it is a bit cumbersome. Maybe there is a new way to do this as it does work slick when patients use the medicare wellness and can be saved to the chart under imported item, like I do a paper form when filled out at office. Also there is a new updox user group and you might want to pose your question there at community.updox.com