User Guide — Managing Patient Relations
When a patient contacts the office with administrative issues or questions, you can use the Case Management feature to record and track these issues (the Case Management feature must be enabled for your practice).
Note: Patient cases listed in the Case Dashboard are nonclinical patient cases — that is, they are not part of the athenaClinicals service.
Features and workflows
The Case Management feature includes the following:
Patient Case Types page
The Patient Case Types page is a system administration page that you can use to create custom case types for your practice. Patient case types allow you to categorize different patient issues so that you can generate worklists and assign tasks accordingly.
Case Dashboard
When the Case Management feature is enabled, the Case Dashboard appears at the bottom of the Workflow Dashboard page.
The Case Dashboard displays the number of cases assigned to each user by status (Open, Closed, Hold) and by assigned-to username. You can add a new case or generate a worklist of cases for each user with cases assigned.
The Case Dashboard is restricted by Provider Group permissions in the same way as the Workflow Dashboard. Users see cases for patients only if they have access to the patient's provider group. If a case is not associated with a patient — for example, when you create a case using the Add a new case link — all users can see the case.
Manage Cases page
The Manage Cases page allows you to open, track, record comments, review actionable items, and close patient cases. From the Workflow Dashboard, click the link to Add a new case. The Manage Cases page appears.
Case Worklist
The Case Worklist allows authorized users to review actionable items, resolve issues, and close patient cases. The worklist displays the list of patient cases by user and by case status (Open, Closed, Hold). You can generate a Case Worklist from the Workflow Dashboard page: click a linked number for a user listed in the Case Dashboard grid. The Case Worklist appears in the Task Bar.
In the Task Bar, all the patient cases assigned to that user appear in the worklist. The list is sorted by the Open Date, with the oldest case listed first. The case ID number provides a link to the Manage Cases page, where you can update the case.