LEVERAGE YOUR EHR TO IMPROVE AWVs
By expanding our EHR's tools for Medicare annual wellness visits (AWVs), our multidisciplinary team increased AWV completion rates by 10%, improved our Medicare star ratings for targeted measures, and improved the AWV process for clinicians. To better address preventive health and risk factor modifications as well as optimize diagnosis coding to capture risk adjustment, we expanded existing AVW clinical decision support tools to prompt appropriate code selection, updated physician and nurse note templates to include hyperlinks to required screenings, automatically generated preventive care plans for patients, and enhanced prompts to promote early-year AWV completion rates.
Additionally, we built preventive care order sets to allow single-click ordering for all services due at one time, rather than individual ordering. The sets are tied to clinical decision support tools for Medicare-covered preventive services recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force with covered diagnoses automatically associated to the order. To improve quality measure reporting, CPT II codes are automated based on documented elements within the note.
To support implementation, we created a comprehensive clinic guide and conducted site-specific education sessions delivered to interdisciplinary teams to outline standardized processes and demonstrate the updated tools.
ASK FPM: PROCEDURE PROCTORING AND PRIVILEGING
For procedure privileging, how many cases typically need to be proctored?
There is no standard number for each procedure. Five to 10 cases are common, but it can be more depending on the organization. Every facility sets its own guidelines, and they can differ by procedure, but the standards should be outlined in the organization's medical staff bylaws.1
Don't be intimidated by this process. Proctoring is a normal and important tool to determine physician competence when seeking privileges. Ideally, a proctor will be another family physician; if not, they should be a neutral party from another specialty.1,2 If you already have privileges for a procedure, consider serving as a proctor for your colleagues.
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