Stu: All right, we’re back at WEPC Secure Access TV with the Epic guys. Our mission is to save you clicks, make you more efficient, and get you home for dinner every night. Today, we’re going to remind you of one of the most powerful tools in Epic—and it’s right there at your fingertips, but easy to forget. It’s called Chart Search, and it’s like having Google, but for your patient’s chart.
Stair: And Stu—before we dive into our three tips in three minutes, we’re going to give you a freebie.
Chart Search has the easiest keyboard shortcut in Epic. It’s Control + Space. It’s right there at the bottom of your keyboard, and it will immediately take you into the search box with your cursor ready, so you don’t even have to move your mouse or click at all. Okay, tip number one for Chart Search: don’t waste time slogging through the patient’s chart looking for information. Need to find lipid results on a patient? Type it into search, and you won’t just get the lab result—you’ll get medications, related notes, and other relevant information. Use the filters at the top to find just what you need, and you can also hover over the results to see more. And here’s something awesome: outside records from Care Everywhere are also included. So if you search for the patient’s last colonoscopy, you’ll see it even if it was done at an outside hospital that’s connected to Epic. And remember, if you need a specific word or phrase, just put quotes around it. Then search will take you only to those exact terms. And here’s another freebie, Stu—it’ll remember your last few searches so you can get there even faster.
Stu: Tip number two: trend lab results and vitals right in Chart Search. Instead of taking multiple clicks to get what you need, you can start your search with the word trend. This is a quick way to see how your patients doing over time and you can actually show them how much weight they’ve lost or what their A1C is doing over the past year. It’s a great time saver.
Stair: And Stu, here’s tip #3 you can use chart search outside the patient’s chart. You can go to just about any screen you need on call Finder, your smart phrases, or the OR schedule. And here’s the last secret about chart search. It’s also a calculator for basic math and some unit conversions.
Stu: Chart search is a great way to eliminate clicks and quickly find the patient information that you’re looking for. Try it out.
