PPRNet Tips for Office Staff

The PPRNet A-TRIP Basics:

• Read practice reports and use them to guide your quality improvement efforts and monitor your progress.  Select areas of weak performance and formulate a realistic plan for improvement.
• Become aware of treatment guidelines and goals.  You are a vital part of the practice’s quality improvement efforts. Take an active role in quality improvement efforts. Come up with new ideas to improve quality.
• Activate your patients.  Provide copies of lab reports to patients, use letter templates to generate letters reporting lab results to patients.  Provide A-TRIP Patient Education handout to patient to explain guidelines and health care goals.
• Be involved in screening and monitoring of patients.  For example, know blood pressure goals for hypertensive patients.  Learn how to measure blood pressure for BP rechecks. Alert provider and patient if patient not at goal.

Please send your tips to the PPRNet ListServ and we will update this list accordingly.

Specific Tips from successful PPRNet-TRIP Practices:

• Use “tickler” systems to obtain better follow-up care.  Use inquiries to generate letter templates detailing labs and alerting patients needing a visit.  Use reminder calls, emails, 3x5 cards to remind patients of f/u visits.
• Call patients not showing for lab visits to reschedule prior to office visits.
• Encourage provider to adapt standard protocols for chronic disease follow-up care, i.e. see all diabetic patients every 3 months. Use tickler systems, recall letters, to remind patients of f/u care, notify patients who have not scheduled f/u.  Schedule f/u appointments at time of checkout.
• Use inquiries to provide outreach to patients who may be in need of follow-up care. For example, identify patients with coronary artery disease and LDL not at goal, and contact for better management. Conduct billing query to find patients (i.e. diabetics with no visit in one year), create mail merge file to contact patients.
• Review charts to identify patients needling labs, lipid screening, and establish protocol to indicate to provider that these are needed.
• Schedule lab visits before office visits for patients with chronic diseases, such as DM.
• Use messaging/email system to send delayed messages to self to remind yourself about lab work and other interventions that must occur before next visit.
• Standardize a method for identifying “No Shows” and cancelled appointments in scheduler. Contact no shows to set up another appointment, particularly for patients with chronic diseases.  Create “No show” notes containing a plan, e.g. “ re-schedule for X date.”  Self-messaging can be used to remind yourself whether f/u appointments have been made.
• Some practices have “No show” policy posted in office and charge for missed visits.

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Please send your tips to the PPRNet ListServ and we will update this list accordingly.

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