10 SIMPLE TIPS AND TOOLS THAT MAKE TELUS PS SUITE® FASTER, EASIER,

AND MORE POWERFUL

Get More From Your EMR

Getting Started: Checklist of Best Practices 2 !Introduction 3 !

Tip #1: Adding Toolbars 4

Tip #2: Using Smart Reminders 5

Tip #3: Decision Support Tools & Calculators 6

Tip #4: Flowsheets to Track Patient Health 7

Tip #5: Creating Progress Notes & Consult Letters 8

Tip #6: Patient Report Cards & Action Plans 9

Tip #7: Patient Handouts in PS Suite 10

Tip #8: Email Consent in PS Suite 11

Tip #9: Online Patient Registration 12

Tip #10: Waiting Room Medication Review 13

Bonus Tip: Using the HealthLinks Specialist Directory 14

!About OceanWave 15

TABLE OF CONTENTS

GETTING STARTED: A Checklist of Best Practices

// Page 3

Do you….

Have a PS Suite toolbar installed with links to your most-used resources?

Use Smart Reminders for preventive management tasks

Use decision support tools and calculators in PS Suite

Track patient health over time with flowsheets?  

Use Encounter assistants to create progress notes and consult letters?  

Provide patients with report cards and action plans that are stored and tracked in your EMR?  

Store and access patient handouts in PS Suite?  

Capture and keep track of email consent in your EMR?  

Let patients register and share medical details from home?  

Let patients review medication and reminders in the waiting room?  

Link to the Ocean HealthLinks referral directory of specialists and allied health providers from your EMR? !

If you answered no to any of these

questions, this guide can help.

Some of the most powerful, time-saving features in PS Suite are left untouched by physicians and clinicians that use the EMR everyday. In this quick guide, we share 10 helpful tips (plus a bonus tip) to help you use PS Suite for everything from clinical decision support to patient communication and administrative tasks.  

With our library of free templates and downloadable tools, you can get more from your EMR, while saving time and improving patient care.

INTRODUCTION: Making the Most of TELUS PS Suite® EMR

// Page 4

Getting Started: PS Suite makes it easy to keep your most-used links and resources available from the patient chart. To get you started, CognisantMD has a free, simple setup guide and downloadable toolbar file with a few pre-defined links that you can copy or change, including Google Maps and ODB. You can find the toolbar here: http://www.cognisantmd.com/docs/pss-ocean-toolbar/.

To customize links on the toolbar, you need to use the custom form editor in PS Suite. From the editor, you can easily add links for your own commonly used custom forms, stamps or online resources.

TIP #1: Add a PS Suite Toolbar with your most-used links

// Page 5

A toolbar with commonly used links can save you time and make routine tasks easier. You can make toolbars even more useful by adding custom links to things like your favourite medical reference platform.

Bonus Tip:

You can download ready-

made toolbars from the

CognisantMD library and

edit them with your

favourite links.

Getting Started: You can create your own reminders in PS Suite, or you can download the free, pre-configured reminders available in the CognisantMD Clinical Resource Library. These are frequently updated to align with current clinical guidelines, and are designed to recognize all key terms (eg. for pap screening, previous “pap” and “cytology” results would both be taken into account). Let us know if you have ideas for other useful reminders, or upload your own for the benefit of your peers.

TIP #2: Use Smart Reminders for preventive Management

// Page 6

Reminders help you to provide better patient care by automatically alerting you when your patient may be due for tests or other procedures, right in the patient chart. Reminders can be configured to trigger for all patients meeting a specific set of criteria, and they can serve as useful visual cues for interventions like counseling, periodic testing or prophylaxis. Reminders can help physicians during the encounter using the REMIND field in the CPP, or they can be used between visits to generate lists of patients due for follow-up.

Links to Popular Downloadable Reminders

• Tetanus shot reminder  • Pneumococcal vaccine reminder  • Microalbumin reminder  • Smoking cessation reminder  • Warfarin INR reminder

• Pap screen reminder  • Mammogram reminder  • Colonoscopy screening reminder  • Bone mineral density reminder  • Flu shot reminder

Getting Started: CognisantMD’s free clinical resource library has a number of forms based on validated clinical prediction rules and other tools that may be relevant to your practice. For example: the Wells Criteria form is a validated prediction rule for assessing the risk of DVT; the Stroke Risk Calculator assists in assessing the risk/benefit ratio of patients with atrial fibrillation; and the Mosteller formula calculates BSA for drug dosing.

Full instructions for adding a new calculator or decision support tool to PS Suite can be found here.

TIP #3: Install decision support tools and calculators

// Page 7

CognisantMD’s free clinical resource library has a number of forms based on clinical guidelines to help you with point-of-care decision support and chronic disease management. These tools can support clinical decision making by offering risk and probability assessments. For example, the latest cardiac age and Framingham risk calculator is available, as are forms for diabetes, asthma action plans, and more.

TIP #4: Track patient health over time with flowsheets

// Page 8

Similar to lab tables, TELUS PS Suite Flowsheets are valuable tools to help you track various patient values over time. However, unlike lab tables, Flowsheets allow you to track any patient criteria including weight and blood pressure. They are particularly useful for specific patient populations like patients with diabetes or congestive heart failure.

Getting Started: Flowsheets are easy to create in PS Suite. From your EMR, choose the View menu -> Show Flowsheet (or just press F1). From here you can choose the File menu -> Add Global Flowsheet to create a flowsheet for a specific patient population, like diabetes or congestive heart failure. Just click on the Add Field button to add a new health metric. For example, you can add Hemoglobin A1C by choosing the Lab Values column. !A series of pre-configured flowsheets are also freely available in the CognisantMD Library, including an Atrial Fibrillation Flowsheet, and flowsheets for Rheumatology and Cardiology designed for specialists.

Getting Started: CognisantMD’s clinical resource library provides access to a number of free encounter assistants to help you get started. Simply click on this link or search for “encounter” in the library to see a quick list. You can also search for a specific condition. If you have a specific EA in mind that isn’t currently available, let us know and we’ll see how we can help.

TIP #5: Create progress notes and consult letters with Encounter Assistants

// Page 9

PS Encounter Assistants (EAs) are point-and-click templates that can automate the creation of a progress note or consult letter. They can also provide quick links to common workflow actions like creating a bill, sending a message, printing a handout, and so on. By using customized EAs for specific encounter types, you can streamline many of the tasks that previously had to be done manually and separately.

Getting Started: Report cards are valuable tool to summarize a patient’s health status in the context of a particular chronic disease. They are also an excellent motivating interviewing tool. Similarly, written action plans are an important component of care, and have been shown to be significantly more effective than verbal action plans.. You can access a series of sample action plans in the Ocean Clinical Resource Library.

Depending on your specialty, you may consider creating a customized treatment plan for your patients using PS custom forms. Using the built-in stamping tools in PSS, these custom forms can extract patient-specific information from the chart and allow you to type in quick notes for individual patients. We would be happy to provide advice and assistance if you have any questions along these lines.

TIP #6: Provide patients with report cards and action plans

// Page 10

Written action plans and report cards can serve as a valuable and time-saving communication tool for your patients. Keeping action plans and report cards easily accessible from your EMR is a great way to ensure you provide these valuable resources to your patients.

Links to Useful PS Suite

Action Plans:

Asthma

COPD

Diabetes Report Card (this

provides a quick summary of

a patient’s lipids, blood

pressure, A1C, and more)

TIP #7: Store and access patient handouts in PS Suite

// Page 11

Importing handouts into PS Suite is an easy way to keep useful handouts easily accessible. By using links from the toolbar, you can easily set up bookmarks that link to your own files and web-based resources.

Bonus Tip from Dr. Kavanagh

“I like to use the Evernote

application to reference my

clinical notes, which I can access

from anywhere in the clinic or on

my smartphone. Using Evernote, I

can enter a hyperlink for quick

access to patient handouts.”

Getting Started: Importing handouts into PS Suite is easy. You can import any text file, Word file, PDF, or image into the Handouts window, accessible in the main PS Suite toolbar. You may also consider importing a handout as a PS custom form, which allows you to make patient-specific customizations, such as a quick entry field for typing individualized notes, or text fields that stamp in patient-specific information. !Sometimes it’s easier to just use Google or a set of bookmarks to manage your patient handouts. You can use PS Suite’s Help menu to store a set of bookmarks. This approach also has the advantage of being synchronized across all machines. Some sites set up the same set of bookmarks on every machine.

Getting Started: Many clinics have adopted OceanWave to assist with the difficult process of obtaining and documenting email consent in the patient record. Using the tablet, email consent can be obtained in the waiting room, or even online in advance of the appointment. It also conveniently collects the patient’s email and saves it in the patient demographics automatically.

You can see a sample OceanWave email consent form here.

TIP #8: Track email consent in the patient record

// Page 12

Although email is very convenient for clinicians and patients, it remains an insecure medium due to its lack of encryption. The College and CMPA recommend that physicians provide adequate informed consent for patients before we exchange any health information via email. When possible, they recommend clinics use a more secure medium for exchanging information. Using an OceanWavetablet at registration, you can securely capture and track email consent in the patient record while keeping email contact information up to date.

Bonus Tip:

We recommend that you set up a

PSS reminder to automatically

flag patients that haven’t agreed

to a standardized email consent

note.

Getting Started: OceanWave by CognisantMD gives clinics a secure way to receive information from patients online, without the security risks, patient expectations, and additional challenges associated with traditional email.

You can use OceanWave Online to let new patients register online prior to their first appointment. Using a simple email invitation, patients (or their parents) are prompted to complete a secure, encrypted online form. The online form lets them document their entire medical history and review clinic policies in advance of the appointment. Ocean will automatically format and summarize this information and upload it into the EMR. It also updates the demographic fields in the chart.

TIP #9: Let your patients securely register and share medical details from home

// Page 13

Using OceanWave Online forms integrated with PS Suite, new patients can register and provide a complete history before they come in for their first appointment. The OceanWave Online platform also provides a useful way to securely gather information from patients without introducing email communication, which is open to security risks and misuse.

Getting Started: With OceanWave tablets, reminders can be configured to automatically appear to patients in the waiting room. This is particularly useful for asking patients directly about things like the flu shot, tetanus shot, Pneumococcal vaccine or smoking cessation.

Patients can also use OceanWave tablets to review their medications while awaiting their visit in the waiting room. The patient’s current medications are pulled automatically from the EMR, whereupon patients can indicate whether they are “still taking”, “not taking”, “missing a few doses”, and so on. Physicians save time by not having to review this information verbally and benefit from having a more reliable and up-to-date account of the patient’s drug profile.

TIP #10: Let your patients review medications and reminders in the waiting room

// Page 14

You can make PS Suite reminders even more powerful by displaying them directly to your patient on an OceanWave tablet in the waiting room. This gives patients time to consider important issues like smoking cessation before the appointment while making patient visits more efficient. The same approach can be taken for medication review and reconciliation.

Getting Started: Check it out today. You can access the free OceanHealthLinks.ca directory from any browser. To refer a patient, simply click on the HealthLinks button in the Ocean custom form in the patient’s chart. You’ll see a map-based directory of medical professionals near the patient and you can choose from a wide variety of specialties and health services.

BONUS TIP: Quickly find and refer to specialists and allied health professionals with HealthLinks

// Page 15

Do you ever have to search for a specialist or allied health provider outside of your address book? What about finding the closest lab, diagnostic imaging site or other health service to a patient's home? Have you ever had difficulty locating a requisition form for a particular site? Using a link to the Ocean HealthLinks directory on a toolbar in PS Suite, you are one click away from a comprehensive listing of medical professionals.

This free, easy-to-use tool

benefits both you and your

patients by automatically

generating a map along with a

pre-filled requisition form that

you can print or, for participating

clinics, send electronically with

one click.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to use patient-facing tablets with TELUS PS Suite® to improve administration, patient care, and more, let us know.

Learn more at CognisantMD.com