Athenahealth Features That Will Make Your Life Easier: Part 1 - Order Alarms

I recently discovered how to mark messages in my phone as unread and, wow, has it been a game changer. This has been a capability for over a year, but I was completely oblivious. If there was ever an instance where I needed to follow up on a text message that I couldn't respond to immediately, I would create an additional reminder in my phone so I wouldn't forget to respond later. I created a workaround to make up for a feature that already existed.    

Ever wonder if you are guilty of doing the same thing within your EMR and Practice Management Systems? The Ignite Consultants see this too frequently from a clinical, revenue, financial and patient communication perspective. We'd like to kick off a new blog series highlighting the most underutilized parts of athena.  

We’ll be launching this series with an overview of athena Order Alarms. There are multiple alarms in athena – some you see in the UI and have control over, such as Order Alarms, while others are not as transparent and cannot be customized, such as Claim Alarms. Order Alarms have both clinical and schedule management benefits. They provide a way for providers and/or staff to track and monitor an order to ensure it is completed or resulted by the patient and/or receiving facility. Order Alarms can be found when placing a new clinical order in the “Assessment and Plan.” 

When using an alarm on a clinical order, you are telling athena to remind you to follow up on the specific order based on the timeline you specify in the “alarm” dropdown. For instance, if an alarm on a lab order is set for two weeks and within two weeks of submitting the order a result is not received, or it is received but doesn’t get properly linked back to the original order, then the alarm will go off and a new task will populate in the “Need Follow Up” section of the Clinical Inbox to prompt you or your staff to ensure the lab was performed. If you notice your “Need Follow Up” bucket growing out of control, then it may be time to revisit your default order alarm values.   

Each order type has a default alarm value that ranges from one to two weeks. This default may be overridden at the practice or individual level in a few ways.  

1. When placing a new order within an Encounter or Order Group you may adjust an individual order’s alarm before selecting “sign orders.”  

2. Order Sets:  

a. If your practice allows for individuals to configure their own order sets, then the default Alarm value may be overridden at the individual level by navigating to the cogwheel > Order Sets.  

b. If you've chosen to govern Order Sets at the practice level and prefer users to not configure their own Order Sets, then you may override the default Alarm value by navigating to the cogwheel > Clinicals Admin > Order Sets.   

3. User preference: Navigate to the Cogwheel > User Preferences and select “No lab alarms by default” if you wish to remove all alarms for the lab order type.  

4. Order Routes: Override the default alarm value and specify the configuration at the order type group, department or receiving clinical provider level.   

Athena follows a hierarchy for alarm values if multiple values exist for a given order. For more information on which alarm value will be applied, review Which alarm setting does athenaOne use for an order? 

The Order Reminder feature can also be extremely beneficial when tacked on to an order follow up workflow. Order Reminders send communication directly to patients so that your staff doesn’t have to complete the follow up. After accessing a task in the “Need Followup” section, select the “Send Order Reminder via Communicator” and athena will complete the follow up on your practice’s behalf.  Based on the patient’s messaging preferences, an email, phone call or SMS message will be sent reminding the patient to complete their Order. 

Did you know this athena feature existed? If not, let's chat! We'd love to help you implement these workflows at your practice to be more efficient! 

*athena releases and updates may alter above mentioned feature capabilities