Creating Favorites **UPDATE**

Ok, slight change of plans for those of you (probably CT techs) who have saved Metformin and Gastroview Nursing communications. Previously these messages were attached to a generic nursing communication. We simply renamed the display name and dropped in the message in the comment field. This worked fine until people attempted to add it to their favorites. For some reason the comment text was not copying over and blank messages were being sent.

To resolve this the Orders team created 3 unique EAP records for Metformin and both of the Gastroview messages. This means that, if you had previously added those items to your favorites, you need to remove them and add the newly added preference list items. Now when you add them, the text will be automatically sent to the nurse every time (even though nothing will appear in the comment box........I know.....that part is confusing!!!)

This boils down to two simple steps. Remove your old favorites and add them again and everything will be fine.

Thanks!

Be careful with Favorites

A recent issue of Nurses not being able to view nursing communication comments has been traced back to individual users preference lists. What appears to have happened is that users saved a Nursing communication order for withholding Metformin, but the default comments did not get saved along with it. Therefore if a user selected the order for withholding the med from the original preference list, the comments will display. If they added it to their favorites list and did not cut and paste the comment, the order would appear as blank.

Thanks

MRI Techs-->Printing Face Sheet

There was a question today about how to print up the MRI face sheet. This is the form that the MRI dept is printing that displays insurance info, among other things. The key here is what the status of the patient is. If your patient does not yet have an appointment, and remains on the schedule orders report he route that should be taken is....

• click the patient station icon
• highlight the correct admission
• click form reprint
• place a check next to "ssmw face sheet"
• change the printer id to the correct one
• click print

If the patient is scheduled to an appointment in EPIC then take the same route but simply select the appointment instead of the admission in the above flow. In this scenario the default printer will not need to be changed.

Therefore....

pt has appt=select the appt from patient station and print

pt does not have appt=select the admission, change the printer and print

That should work!

CT Techs - Gastroview communication

Two new nursing communication choices are now available on the inpatient preference list. Much like the nursing communication for withholding metformin, you may now send a communication to the patients nurse about the use of gastroview. There are 2 choices on the list. Pediatric instructions are available, as well as adult abdomen/pelvis instructions.

To find the nursing communication orders take the same route you would to enter orders for contrast.

Encounter button-->Look at the order tree-->Find these nursing communcations under "medications".

Thanks

Finding Contrast from previous Exams

If you are searching to see whether a patient had contrast administered on a recent exam, you can do this in the patients chart. Simply enter the patients chart and click the Medications tab. From there you will be launched in the patients Medications page. Click on the History tab. It may then be advantageous to click on the Filter tool. After clicking the filter icon you may place a check mark next to any of the meds listed. The list will be comprised of everything on the patients med list. As soon as you place a check by the med, it will display. Double clicking on the medication will then open a page offering details of the encounter.

Hope this comes in handy!

Ordering Contrast-->Rad co-sign *UPDATE*

OK.....final answer. The orders team has just given the OK for rad techs to list the Radiologist as the "ordering provider" when entering orders for contrast. This will ensure that the co-sign message is correctly sent to the radiologist who is authorizing the contrast order.

Sorry for the confusion.

Thanks

Canceling once an order has been checked in

Ok....here we go. The million dollar question.

EPIC Technical support offers this advice, and its surprisingly simple. The BEST way to cancel an order once it has been checked in is to simply highlight it on the tech worklist, click the cancel/undo button and place a check in each of the available boxes. This will unarrive the patient, cancel the appointment and cancel the order all in one swoop.

It is best explained this way.....If a tech cancels an appointment or unlinks an order from an appointment AFTER its been checked in........then if they cancel the parent order in ancillary orders, the child order (the one with the accession number) will not be cancelled.

I hope this helps!

Cancelling Appointments and Orders

A few issues have come up with the Cancel/Undo button not functioning as desired. If you run into a situation where, as a tech, you need to cancel an appointment and then an order, follow this path.

Go to the patients Appt Desk.

• Scheduling-->appts
• Find your patient and double click to open your patients appointment desk
• Locate your patients appointment on the "future" tab
• Highlight it and click "can/rsch"
• Place a check mark in the box next the the appt(s) you wish to cancel and accept

Now that the appointment has been canceled you can go to ancillary orders and locate the patients order and cancel it.

Thanks

More Run Time Error Issues

Many run time error issues were reported Sunday afternoon. EPIC is once again attempting to determine the cause of the errors. There seems to be some link to the Pre-Log In screens, as removing them allows the workstations to be used. The problematic part is that the Pre-Log In Screens seem to work just fine for weeks at a time and suddenly they all trigger this error simultaneously. We are working to figure out the problem and get the Pre-Log In screens back up and running as soon as possible.

Thanks

Schedule Orders Report Options

After discussion with the Interventional techs, they have decided they want a slightly different set up for their Schedule Orders report(SOR). They have decided that they want all of the orders that are expected to be done today, to appear with a unique background color. Those orders with an expected exam date other than today will not have a that color. However, in order to do that, their STAT orders will no longer appear in RED font. The will still appear on the top of the list and be labeled as "High Priority".

It boils down to these choices....

• We can put in a permanent filter (diagnostic has this) so that only your exams for today will appear. This means that you can't view orders for anything other than today on the SOR.
• You can do manual filtering on the expected imaging date column each day to filter on only todays Date. This way you can take the filter away to see whats in store for tomorrow.
• You can do a color coding scenario (like IR has opted for), but you lose the ability to have STATS appear in RED. They would still appear RED on the pre-login screen however.

If you would like to explore any of these options, let Karen/Patrick know and we'll work with you to make something happen.

Thanks