Following his participation in the Community Information Integration/Central Patient Attachment Registry initiative, Dr. Barney Truong began receiving eNotifications in his EMR. These notifications tell him if one of his patients has had an emergency department (ED) discharge or was admitted or discharged from hospital. One day, an eNotification indicated that one of his older patients had been seen in the ED for syncope (i.e. fainting or passing out). Concerned, Dr. Truong called the patient to see what had happened. The patient said that he had been feeling lightheaded for a few days and then, one evening, he had a syncope episode. His wife called the ambulance which took him straight to the ED. The hospital staff checked the patient out, told him everything was ok, and sent him home. Unfortunately, due to a language barrier the patient still wasn’t sure what had happened.
While on the phone with the patient, Dr. Truong learned that one of the patient’s anti-hypertension medications had been switched out due to a manufacturing shortage. Since the patient had been feeling lightheaded ever since, Dr. Truong told him that the light-headedness was probably due to being hypotensive. As a result, Dr. Truong advised the patient to cut his medication in half, monitor his blood pressure for the next week or two, and call back if he had any issues.
“It was a pretty quick and simple call to fix a pretty non life-threatening medical problem, but boy was he ever appreciative of the call. He couldn’t thank me enough. He just felt so much more reassured that someone was taking care of him.”
Since then, Dr. Truong has noticed similar cases where patients are very appreciative of a quick call to check in, following an emergency room visit or hospital stay.
Does eNotifications sound like a service you want in your clinic? Tell your PCN you are interested and to learn more about the CII/CPAR initiative, both family doctors and specialists can check out these short videos for the
basics as well the
steps to take to participate and visit this area of the ACTT
website for further information.
For more information:
