Spotlight on the Enhanced Assessment and Plan Solution
Crossings Healthcare Solutions’ Enhanced Dynamic Documentation platform is a collaboration of tools that automates physician documentation and incorporates advanced clinical decision support. One of these tools, the Enhanced Assessment and Plan Solution, helps to provide busy physicians with a single stop to achieve this without disrupting workflow.
Ehab Hanna, MD, Chief Medical Information Officer at Universal Health Services, Inc. (UHS), and Evan Watsky, Assistant Manager of Clinical Orders at UHS, were part of the Crossings team that created the Enhanced Assessment and Plan Solution.
“It is essentially a diagnoses-specific assessment plan, but the real value is in the embedded clinical decision support around core quality measures,” Watsky says of the solution.
Designed to make physicians’ jobs easier
Crossings developed the Enhanced Assessment and Plan Solution in an effort to expand and optimize the existing features of the Cerner documentation tools.
The team began by defining the challenges. “We held interviews and conversations with our physicians, looking at the struggles they faced,” Dr. Hanna says.
“They wanted a good view of patient information and history, including the latest notes. That was a big theme we kept hearing about and we set out to solve that big problem.”
With a vision of what physicians needed, Crossings set out to exceed those needs by designing something more advanced. “We realized we could do clinical decision support through the Assessment and Plan component — staying within the physician workflow, not requiring them to go elsewhere to address these issues,” Watsky recalls.
The Enhanced Assessment and Plan Solution features the ability to flag physicians in real time without interrupting workflow. For example, the tool can remind a physician that a stroke patient needs aspirin and in turn, the physician can order that medication and make note of it, all in one place.
Always focused on improving patient care
The Enhanced Assessment and Plan component of the Dynamic Documentation platform received positive feedback from physicians, who appreciate access to the information they need at the right time, in the right place.
“People love it and can’t wait to get their hands on it,” Dr. Hanna says.
When physicians do not have to interrupt time with patients to document and access information, patient care improves. The solution also enhances communication between physicians, providing continuity of care when one provider can pick up where the other left off.
The Crossings team will continue to improve the Enhanced Assessment and Plan Solution in the future.
“The most recent enhancement is being designed for ambulatory clinics,” Watsky says. “It’s a perfect example of us hearing a need — we knew we needed the solution in the hospitals, but they need it in the clinics, too.