What You See Versus What You Are Told: Addressing Appointment Discrepancies in EMR for Radiation Oncology
Faculty and Abstracts
Purpose: Patients were not showing up on time for their consent and/or contrast appointments. The patients would only see the appointment time for their ct simulation in their portal and not for consent and contrast. This resulted in delays in the patients care causing them to be in the department longer and the simulation schedule falling behind. When patients were called by scheduling the day before their simulation they would be confused why their portal said one time but the scheduler was telling them a different time to arrive. With the help of I.T. a new appointment was made called “consent/contrast” that would appear in the patient’s portal.
Methodology: With a majority of patients using the patient portal to check when their appointments were, it was necessary to fix the consent and/or contrast appointment to see. I.T. was able to build a new appointment solely for consent and contrast under R&V. Once built in R&V, the EMR (electronic medical record) I.T. department then had to build the consent/contrast appointment in the EMR for the two appointments to correlate in the systems.
Results: With the new appointment viewable in the patient portal, patients have been showing up on time for their consent and/or contrast. When scheduling has called to confirm the patient’s appointment the patient can now see under their portal having a visual of what their being told. This has cleared up confusion for the patient but has lead to confusion for scheduling. With the new appointment on the simulation schedule, it has made it difficult for scheduling due to the appointment clustering up the schedule.
Conclusions: Patients now know when they have to show up for their entire simulation schedule. This has resulted in an increase of correct arrival time and a clearer understanding of the patient’ schedule. With some trial and error the confusion for scheduling is being figured out with different strategies being tried for a better workflow.
