User Guide — Expedited Encounters and Deferred Insurance

athenaClinicals

With the Expedited Encounters feature, a provider working outside a home office without support staff can create appointments and encounters directly from the patient chart.

 

With the Deferred Insurance feature, a provider can defer collection of insurance information until after the provider completes the visit. These appointments appear in the Missing Insurance worklist.

 

To create encounters using the expedited encounter functionality, you must have the Clinicals: Expedited Encounters role.

 

To defer insurance when creating appointments, you must have both the Clinicals: Expedited Encounters and Clinicals: Deferred Insurance roles.

 

 

 

 

Note: Your practice must have the Expedited Encounters feature enabled.

  1. In the patient chart, click the Menu icon and select New encounter.
    Note: The first time you create an expedited encounter for a patient, the Check-in page appears, so that you can complete the required fields. Subsequently, when you create an expedited encounter for this patient, the Intake stage appears. (The Check-in stage reappears if any required fields are missing.)

Check-in

  1. Appt type — Select the appointment type for the visit.
  2. Scheduling provider and Rendering — If you are a provider, these fields default to your username. If you are not a provider, select a provider for each field. (The selected providers remain set until you change them.)
  3. Follow the prompts to complete the required fields.
  4. Click Save or Done with Check-in.
    The appointment you just created appears on the list of appointments in the schedule and in the Today's Appointments worklist.

Encounter workflow

  1. Begin the encounter workflow.
    Note: Exam templates — such as the History of Present Illness Templates, Review of Systems Templates, and Physical Exam Templates — can be configured for male or female patients only. If your practice does not require the patient's gender/sex to be specified as part of patient registration or the check-in process, some of your exam templates may not be available when you see patients in an expedited encounter.

 

 

Note: To follow these steps, your practice must have the Expedited Encounters and Deferred Insurance feature enabled. Billing staff must monitor the Missing Insurance worklist daily to update any patient encounters with deferred insurance.

 

If you are a provider examining a patient who does not have a patient record in athenaOne, you can register the patient yourself: On the Main Menu, click Patients. Under PATIENT REGISTRATION, click New Patient Registration, enter the required information in the yellow fields, and click Save. After the patient is registered, follow these steps:

  1. In the patient chart, click the Menu icon and select New encounter.
    Note: The first time you create an expedited encounter for a patient, the Check-in page appears. If the patient does not have insurance information entered, a message appears.
  2. Click Defer insurance. The Check-in page appears.

Follow the instructions at the top of the Check-in page to complete the required fields

  1. Appt type — Select the appointment type for the visit.
  2. Scheduling provider and Rendering — If you are a provider, these fields default to your username. If you are not a provider, select a provider for each field. (The selected providers remain set until you change them.)
  3. Follow the prompts to complete the required fields.
  4. Click Save or Done with Check-in.
    The appointment you just created appears on the list of appointments in the schedule and in the Today's Appointments worklist.

Encounter workflow

  1. Begin the encounter workflow.
    Note: Exam templates — such as the History of Present Illness Templates, Review of Systems Templates, and Physical Exam Templates — can be configured for male or female patients only. If your practice does not require the patient's gender/sex to be specified as part of patient registration or the check-in process, some of your exam templates may not be available when you see patients in an expedited encounter.

 

 

 

athenaClinicals with athenaCollector: If your practice is able to defer insurance, your front desk staff are responsible for monitoring the worklist of encounters with missing insurance and updating them accordingly. We recommend doing this frequently on the days that your providers are seeing nursing home patients.

 

  1. Contact the CSC and request to enable the Expedited Encounters feature and the Deferred Insurance feature. The CSC will advise you as to which departments should have this feature enabled.
  2. Add the user role "Clinicals: Expedited Encounters" to the providers who visit nursing homes without accompanying support staff to schedule appointments and verify insurance and demographic information. (Add roles on the Roles tab of the Users page.)
  3. Add the user role "Clinicals: Deferred Insurance" to the providers who visit nursing homes without accompanying support staff, if they are allowed to see patients without collecting insurance information. (Add roles on the Roles tab of the Users page.)
    Note: Support staff in the provider's home office should review the missing insurance worklist on a daily basis and fill in insurance information after the provider has initiated the appointment. If the provider has no support staff, athenahealth should not give them permission to use this feature.

Best practice: The provider goes directly to a patient's chart when searching for a patient.

  1. For each provider using this feature, display the User Preferences page.
  2. Go to chart by default on find patient by ID — Check the box.
  3. Click Submit.