Stu: Welcome back to the Epic Guys post Wave 1 Go Live.
Stair: We’re still here.
Stu: We are, and we’ve learned a lot from St. Vincent’s go-live. Today, we want to share three tips in three minutes on In Basket, Epic’s control center for messages, results, and document routing.
Steven, it’s really hard to know what to expect until you’re live in the system with real patient requests, medication refills, and documents to sign. So this past month has really helped us see some great ways to manage this important part of our daily work. We can also see from our Epic Signal data where we’re doing things well and where we have opportunities after the first few weeks we’ve had.
Stair: Totally agree, Stu. You know, the e-learning video is helpful in training, but that’s about all we get until we have real patients. Let’s take a look at an overview of In Basket first, and then we’ll get to our three tips.
All right, the first thing you notice is a quick summary of your newest messages. You can knock these out quickly in between visits or when you have a few minutes during the day. On the left, there are different categories of messages like medication refills, patient advice requests, and open charts. You’ll only see them if you have a related message in there. You can also add covering users right here when you’re off or out of town and need somebody to cover for you. Move messages to the Follow-Up section when you need to remind yourself to check something later.
Stu: Okay, let’s get to our Tip #1: Stay on top of your In Basket messages.
Busy doctors have plenty of patients, which can generate a lot of messages to your clinic pool and your results inbox. Utilize your time during the day efficiently and make sure you’re keeping up with these to keep In Basket from becoming a source of frustration and burnout. Try to stay ahead of it during the downtime you have throughout the day.
Focus on the high-priority messages and results first, and this is important: communicate with your staff and manager to make sure you’re getting only the messages that you need. And don’t forget the Do Not Allow Replies button. This will help keep your message volume down.
Stair: Epic Guys Tip #2: Use Results Management for all results communication.
Results Management is the best way to manage all patient results, and it’s accessed here or here. Not only can you quickly review the current result, but you can also access relevant parts of the patient’s record, like recent labs, medications, and even your last note, without having to open the chart.
Click Done to remove the result from your In Basket.
Once you’re in Results Management, send a message to your nurse or to the patient in MyChart.
For common messages, like normal results, you can create a Quick Action to send the message to the nurse or the patient and get it out of your inbox with one click. Now it will be right here waiting for you. For other normal results, check out ART Draft Responses.
Stu: Tip #3: Check out ART Draft Responses.
Epic has a cool new feature called Augmented Response Technology (ART). When a patient sends a new message on the portal with a medical issue, ART will draft a response based on information from the patient’s chart, recent visits, and even upcoming appointment information. You have the option to use it, edit it, or discard it and create your own message. Remember, you are always responsible for the information in the message, but it’s nice to get a head start and save some mental energy.
Stair: You know, Stu, we’ll be honest. In Basket can be a challenge when you start using Epic if you don’t get a jump on some of these tips. But if you can keep In Basket as a priority during your day, you can avoid pajama time answering messages. Let us know how we can help, and we’ll see you in the next episode.
