Here ye! Here ye! New Alerts to the Inbox

I am pleased to announce, especially to those of us who provide primary care, that alerts will be sent to your CIS Inbox when patients are discharged from the hospital and when patients are transferred to and from a critical care unit, including Med/Surg ICU, CVICU, PICU and NICU.

You hopefully know that PCPs have been receiving alerts to the Inbox for the last couple of years when patients have been seen in the ED and when admitted to the hospital. All alerts will share similar verbiage as well as the same unavoidably ugly font.

Doe, Jane was discharged from BMC (or BFMC/BMLH) on Date-Time. You are receiving this notification because you are listed in CIS as the patient's primary care physician. If you are not this patient's primary care physician please contact the Admissions Department to have them remove the relationship.

[Substitute seen in ED/admitted/transferred for discharged and you'll get the idea.]

As for other Inbox deliveries, the hospital medicine service forwards copies of H&P and discharge summaries to PCP inboxes via the Request Endorsement function. While this adds an extra click or two to the signing process, the automatic delivery of PowerNotes to the PCP can save time and improve patient care.

Look forward to the development of documentation that will arrive from the ED when patients are seen and discharged for outpatient follow-up. We are working with the Emergency Depts at all three hospitals and hope to have this start rolling by the end of calendar year 09. The BMC ED is doing an amazing job of EMR acculturation since the rollout of CIS ED/FirstNet, a slick tracking system that improves communications and efficiencies throughout that madhouse. They've also seamlessly transitioned to 100% computerized order entry and are game for more. We are aiming to do the same for BFMC & BMLH EDs over the next year.