One of our providers has brought to my attention that our paper well child forms might be faster than the AC templating system. How do your offices deal with well child exams that are often routine checks where nothing is found?

Perhaps, I could see some of your templates for this. We do many well child exams and your ideas will be helpful.

Thank you all, this forum has been quite helpful.

Benjamin,

Not sure if this is helpful, but in Maine we have to send the Bright Futures Exam sheet to Mainecare. Since we have about 50% Mainecare, rather than do it two different ways, we just use the same paper sheet, then scan it in. All of information is on the paper form, and we do a quick cursory physical note in AC so we have the documentation and the growth charts and vital signs.

Bert,

Thank you; that does help. It is what I'm considering, but I am still interested in how others might organize their templates. Or, do more of you follow Bert's suggestion and simply click in a cursory physical to record growth and vitals?

we use well child templates age defined. I created them using the bright futures format.

I do the same. They are preset to be passed and I will double click and type NO if a section is not passed

Can people say if they have to send a copy to Medicaid if they see kids? And, if so, what do they accept?

Illinois Medicaid does not require us to send any info in, they do come and inspect charts every few years though.

I'm just implementing AC and haven't figured out how to use templates effectively. Seems as though one has to create a template for each section of the SOAP note independently and thus go to each section to insert a template. How does one do otherwise?

Using Forms or predefined H&P's seems cumbersome at best. Am I missing something?

There are a number of ways. You can simply type a common form of text "No Known Drug Allergies" and right click + alt brings up the template save box which you then can save it as same or NKDA. then when you are tabbing through the boxes on another chart and come to the allergy section simply right click and double click on NKDA.

You can save it to one section or multiple sections.
You can create a new one with text from an external source, cut and paste into the template section and create it that way. Many of my well child templates were done that way, but many others were simply saved common text I did not need to keep retyping.

It can be both fast and tedious as you try to get it right.

Thanks, I figured that part out and it is pretty easy. I guess what I'm after is a little more control over the format of the encounter. If I wanted a template that was an entire SOAP note, one needs to have four separate templates, yes? (S.O.A.P.)

How would you have a template for the subjective, assessment and plan prior to the visit or are you referring to an outline?

Currently you cannot set up a template in more than one field at a time.