This page will explain how to use the built in patient reminder reports to identify patients who should receive regular reminders to schedule an appointment with the office.
Patient Reminders
Patient Reminders in TRAKnet 3.1 are intended to serve as a location to document that a patient has been contacted regarding their need to come in for an office visit. This does not necessarily mean that the office is calling to remind a patient of their visit; rather, it is the opposite, per guidelines from CMS regarding these measures of Meaningful Use. This does not mean that reminding patients of their upcoming appointments is not possible in TRAKnet 3.1 at all - TRAKnet integrates directly with DemandForce to provide automated patient appointment reminders. These are two separate, yet identically named, patient reminder features.
Patient Reminder Reports
TRAKnet 3.1 comes preloaded with two reports. To access these reports, from the main screen of TRAKnet, click on the Reports dropdown menu at the top of the screen, then click Patient Lists. This will open the patient lists window.
On this screen there will be two tabs: Rules and Lists and Reports. The Patient Reminder reports are found on the Reports tab.
The reminder reports are found under the "Reminders" folder of reports. There are two reports:
- Patients < 5 and > 65 (Stage 1)
- Patients with 2 Prior Visits (Stage 2)
To generate the list of patients, first enter the reporting period you are using in the date dropdown menus in the upper left-hand portion of this window, then click on the report you wish to execute. Upon selecting a report you will be given additional filtering options to narrow your results. These are:
- Limit Results To — Automatically set to 100, this determines how many patients will be generated in the report.
- No Reminder — This checkbox will hide all patients from the list who have already receive a reminder during that reporting period.
- Contact Preferences — These checkboxes will filter the patient results based on the preferred method of contact. For Meaningful Use, it is required to contact the patient per the patient's preferences; these preferences are set on the patient's demographics.
After selecting all necessary information, the list of patients who fit that report's criteria will be visible in a list on the right-hand portion of the screen.
Reading the Report Results
The results generated by the patient reminders report will contain the following information:
- Patient LastName, FirstName, and MiddleName
- Generation
- Age
- Gender
- Phone
- Phone? Mail? Email? Text? — Yes or No columns indicating if the patient prefers to be contacted with that method.
Above the list of patients are several options for how this information can be used:
- Add Reminder — This will open the Add Reminder window, detailed below, that will allow you to indicate that a reminder has been made. This portion is used to complete the Meaningful Use Requirement.
- View Patient — This option will open the patient's Demographics for review.
- View Patient CDS — If the patient has a Clinical Decision Support rule, this icon will allow the user to review it.
- Export — This option will export this list to a .csv file, which can then be sent to a reminder company.
- Refresh — This will refresh the list.
Documenting a Reminder
As previously mentioned, contacting the patient in his or her preferred method and documenting that reminder are requirements for Meaningful Use. To document the reminder, select the patient you are contacting, then click Add Reminder. The below window will open:
This window contains the following:
- Patient — The patient you selected before clicking Add Reminder.
- Subject — The subject of this reminder document. Note: This will pre-populate based on the selected Communication Method.
- Message — Any notes about the reminder you feel are appropriate. This could be a description of the conversation had to the patient; a copy of the email or text sent to the patient; or a sample of the letter sent to the patient.
- Send To — Who should be making this reminder call/text/email/etc.? This could be the user generating the reminder, if the calls are being made as the reminders are being documented.
- Due Date — When should that user have the reminder completed by?
- Finished — Check this box once the reminder has been sent to the patient.
- Communication Method — How was the reminder sent to the patient? Remember that for Meaningful Use this must match the documented contact method preferences for this patient. Selecting an item from this drop-down menu will populate the Subject of the reminder.
Once all of the necessary information has been documented, click Save to save this reminder record. Note: This is documentation only. The act of sending the reminder email, text, call or message must be completed by the office separately from TRAKnet or outsourced to a reminder company.
(ARCHIVED) As a Measure of Meaningful Use
While this is no longer a requirement in Meaningful Use in 2015, the below video is left archived as a demonstration for performing patient reminders.
Video
For the most up to date video on Meaningful Use, please click here.