Pre-Scheduling Checklists

On the Main Menu, click Settings > Clinicals. In the left menu, under Practice Links — Other, click Pre-Scheduling Checklists

1. Display the Pre-Scheduling Checklists page: On the Main Menu, click Settings > Clinicals. In the left menu, under Practice Links — Other, click Pre-Scheduling Checklists.
2. You can associate this pre-scheduling checklist with a surgery or procedure as follows.
• If this checklist is for a single order type, enter the first few letters in the Order Type field and select the surgery order type from the matching list.
• If this checklist is for an order genus (a group of order types), use the Order Genus menu to select the order genus of the surgery or procedure.
• If this checklist is for an entire order type group, use the Order Type Group menu to select Surgery or Procedure for this checklist.
3. Department — Select the departments that should use the checklist. If the Department selection is blank, the checklist will apply for the surgery/procedure in all departments.
4. Enter the checklist items in the text fields. You can click the arrow icon to add more items, and the X icon to remove items from the checklist.
5. Click Save to save the checklist. The checklist appears in the list below. The checklist items will appear on the order task for the type of surgery/procedure each time it is ordered (within the selected departments).

The checklist tasks you create appear listed on the orders task for a patient, with menus to indicate when each pre-scheduling task is completed for the order. Each item also has a notes field for tracking the status of that item.

(The order must be signed for the checklist items to appear.)

Caution: Use extreme caution when editing checklists and medical history questions. You should edit field names only to fix typos or edit abbreviations. Making substantial changes to content or changing the sequence of checklist items and questions affects all patient charts that include the checklist or question.

• If the checklist is deleted from the admin page, it disappears from all existing surgery orders that previously used the checklist.

• If the checklist is undeleted, any closed (SCHEDULED) orders would have to be reopened for the questions to repopulate.

Editing pre-scheduling checklist items after submitting an order

 

When you use athenaClinicals with athenaCoordinator, you can edit pre-scheduling checklist items in athenaClinicals after submitting an order. athenaOne controls this feature through a department-level setting. You can contact the CSC to enable this feature at the department level.

Note: When you send a surgery or procedure order to a non-athenaCoordinator receiver, you cannot edit the checklist after you submit the order.

 

About pre-scheduling checklist items and the tie-to-orders feature

 

Any inbound document in REVIEW (or later) status can be tied to a checklist requirement for any open orders. This field is available only for patients who have open surgery/procedure orders. Multiple documents can be linked to one requirement and one document can be linked to many requirements.

 

Notes:

• As documents are linked and notes are updated, you may want to update the status manually (the status is not updated automatically).
• All pre-scheduling list elements must be marked "complete" or "n/a" in order to mark the order as scheduled. This action ensures that all items are addressed before the order leaves the scheduler's Clinical Inbox.

Suggested best practices

 

You can route surgery scheduling responsibilities and tasks to practice roles or individual users.

 

You can create a standard pre-scheduling checklist for surgeries or procedures, if your practice follows a standard pre-scheduling procedure.

 

The scheduler should leave surgery or procedure orders assigned to them until all pre-scheduling tasks are complete. The order should then be moved to SUBMITTED or SCHEDULED status. This will move the order out of the scheduler's bucket and start the FOLLOWUP alarm.

 

As documents that satisfy the to-do item arrive, they can be tied to that requirement for that order. After an item is complete, the person who completed the task should mark the item "COMPLETE." For items that may not apply to the particular surgery or patient, the scheduler can mark the item "N/A."

 

Depending on the situation, you may wish to route all Clinical Document — Operative notes, Admin — Insurance approval notifications, and Admin — Insurance denial notifications to the scheduler.

 

For surgeries, after the order is scheduled, the surgery date should be stored in the "perform date" field on the order. This date determines when the FOLLOWUP alarm starts ticking. The FOLLOWUP alarm will fire if the transcribed operative notes aren't tied to the surgery order within 4 weeks of the surgery date.