Tippy - Email Notification of New In Basket Messages

Tippies can be quickly adopted with immediate workflow benefits...

• Get Email Notification of New In Basket Messages

Clinicians who are not routinely on Connect Care may wish to be notified by email when new In Basket messages appear, as might happen if there are late-reporting results after an inpatient or emergency encounter has finished. One or more categories of In Basket message (e.g., test results) can be set to trigger email messages indicating availability of new content at user configurable intervals.

• Open the In Basket workspace.
• Select the Preferences activity (wrench icon in In Basket menu bar).
• Within Preferences, select the "Reminder Emails" tab.
• Either indicate that emails should be sent for any new In Basket message or select one or more message types (the best selections for test results are shown in the image).
• Choose the number of days after which new message reminders should be sent.

Most of these settings are also available to Haiku, Canto and Provider Portal users.

• Manual: Email Reminders

Tippy - In Basket Notification for Inpatient Lab Results

Tippies can be quickly adopted with immediate workflow benefits...

• Get Notification for Selected Inpatient Test Orders

Results relating to orders placed within an inpatient encounter are, with few exceptions, managed within that encounter. There is no default routing to In Basket or other communication channels. The assumption is that results are routinely reviewed by the inpatient team.

 
Sometimes high-stakes results need clinician attention as soon as available. In such cases, inpatient prescribers can mark specific tests for In Basket notification.

Within an opened inpatient chart, go to the "Orders" activity and find the ordered investigation (e.g., imaging, laboratory test). Hover over the order of interest, looking to the far right of the row holding the order where a pick-list icon (q) will appear. Select this, then the "Notify Me" menu option:

The prescriber selecting the notify option will receive an In Basket message as soon as the requested result is available.

• Manual: Inpatient Results and Reports Routing

Tippy - Email Alerts to In Basket Status

Tippies can be quickly adopted with immediate workflow benefits...

• Email Alerts to In Basket Status

Some Connect Care prescribers work a few weeks (e.g., inpatient service) alternating with weeks off clinical work. The clinical information system (CIS) In Basket is important to check daily when on-service, but results and other messages will be less frequent when off-service.

It can be useful to configure the CIS to provide an email alert to new, or accumulating, In Basket tasks. The alert email can go to an address of one's choice because no patient information is revealed.

To set this up, go to the "Personalize" menu within the In Basket activity in Hyperspace.

Select the "Reminder Emails" tab in the pop-up that appears.

You can set the email to use for alerts, the frequency of alerts and whether specific In Basket folders should be used to trigger alerts.

• Tip: In Basket Email Reminders

Tippy - Time-Mark for Notes

Tippies can be quickly adopted with immediate workflow benefits...

• Time-Mark in Notes Review

A prior Tippy highlighted the value of "Time-Mark" in results review. It is possible to mark all viewed lab results as viewed, so the next time one opens the chart all the new results not previously seen are highlighted (bold font).

A parallel convenience is available when reviewing documentation notes:

Clicking on the "Mark All as Not New" command will cause all notes to be marked as already viewed. The next time one opens the chart and there is new documentation content, the unseen notes are highlighted with bold titles.

Tippy - Time-Mark from Storyboard

Tippies can be quickly adopted with immediate workflow benefits...

• Time-Mark in Storyboard

It helps to have a visual indication of test results that are new, or not previously reviewed by the clinician. Typically, new information is set apart with a bold font.

We've shown how "Time-Mark" can be used in the "Results Review" activity to clear the bolding indicator and indicate that you are aware of everything until that point in time.

The same functionality is conveniently available in the Storyboard that appears as the leftmost column in all open charts. Hover over the Storyboard section entitled "New Results" to see the Time-Mark icon appear.

Click on the Time-Mark icon to have the same effect as clicking on this in Results Review. A checkpoint is set and all results marked as not-new. The next time the chart is opened, it is easier to discern if new test results have appeared.

Tippy - Time-Mark for Results

Tippies can be quickly adopted with immediate workflow benefits...

• Time-Mark for Results

The "Results Review" activity is available when a chart is open. It provides a tabular display of test results and offers a great way to take in a lot of information at once... even better if one can pick out new information. This is easy to facilitate.

After scanning the content of Results Review, click on the "Time-Mark" icon. This tags the values as having been seen, as indicated by converting to regular (non-bold) font.

When next in Results Review for the same chart, any new results will be set apart in bold font.

Tippy - MD Notifications in Patient Lists

Tippies can be quickly adopted with immediate workflow benefits...

• Prescriber Notifications in Patient Lists

One of the more useful columns that can be incorporated in patient lists is "IP Notifications" (select column 3043401601 or use one of the inpatient MD My List templates).

The resulting cell has a cloverleaf of visual alerts. Clockwise from top left, these are (1) New Labs, (2) New Notes, (3) Orders needing Cosign, (4) Notes needing Cosign.

Hovering over one of the icons will trigger a pop-up display of additional information (e.g., list of notes requiring cosign with links to view the notes without opening the chart). Double-clicking one of the icons will open the chart to an appropriate activity for taking action (e.g., co-signing notes).

These visual cues can help one focus on new information or unfinished work. The new labs and new notes indicators depend upon use of "Time Mark" in Results Review (Chart Tab) or Storyboard, and "Mark All as Not New" in Notes Review (Notes Tab):

  

Making a habit of clicking these review timestamps when rounding can improve the usefulness of patient lists for task management.

Tippy - Copy Test Results for Notification and Delivery

Tippies can be quickly adopted with immediate workflow benefits...

• Copy Test Results to Self or Others

Ordering prescribers can copy (CC) another prescriber at the time of ordering to ensure that the copied provider also receives the results. Connect Care prescribers always receive a copied result via In Basket. This can help locum prescribers, for example, who want to ensure that the prescriber they are covering for receives an independent copy of a key result.

Ordering prescribers can also copy (CC) themselves. This can be useful if the prescriber works in a "mixed context" (some clinical activity where Connect Care is the record of care and other activity where Connect Care is not the record of care). The copied result can be reflected, via "eDelivery", in the prescriber's external electronic medical record if that is set up as the default delivery location for that prescriber.

Clinicians who are not routinely on Connect Care may wish to copy test results to themselves. Providers are asked to identify a single primary location at which to receive results that are copied to them via Connect Care. These “copied to” results from Connect Care can only be sent to a single location.

• Look to the bottom of the order composer that appears when entering an order for a test and find the "CC Results" section.
• Enter or look up one or more recipients. Use of ".ME" will quickly pull in the name of the prescriber.
  
• Note that one can configure the "My List" button for quickly entering one or more persons (including self) that are commonly copied.
• Sign the order.

It is wise to test this functionality with a few tests. If the results are not routed as expected, then it may be necessary to request a change to one's default delivery location.

• Manual: Copied Results
• Resource: Delivery of Results to Community-based Providers from Connect Care

eSafety Alert - Other Labs in Results Review

eSafety alerts highlight CIS phenomena that require particular attention...

• Lab Results in 'Other' Results Review

Early in the Connect Care launch, it was appreciated that some laboratory results were not filing to clinically expected categories and subcategories of the Results Review tables. Tests with unique identifiers not yet recognized would appear in an 'Other' category.

Physicians need to be careful to not miss potentially important information while test mappings are being optimized (work progresses quickly but could take another week).

It is always possible to review results chronologically and to use search or filters to find a result of interest. If Results Review is used (convenient organization of many results in one place), then a simple technique can clarify where any 'Other' results belong. This is demonstrated in a very short video (1 min):

• Demo: Identifying Category of Other Tests in Results Review

Even after test mappings have been optimized, there is always risk that a new interface with a new lab provider will result in a test that does not map to the outline at first. So this technique is good to remember.