Context: The standard Connect Care discharge process is guided by a Discharge Navigator. The easiest way to make sure that things like discharge prescriptions and medication instructions print is to follow all the steps in the navigator (in order).
At the point that the discharge order is signed, two documents are printed for the patient to take home. An "After Visit Summary" (AVS) includes information about the hospital stay, together with easy to understand alerts to continuing, changed, discontinued and new medications. An accompanying "MedRec for Community Pharmacist" summarizes changes from prior home meds.
Any new medication prescriptions are also printed, as a third document, with expectation that the prescriber will sign these (wet signature) for delivery or fax to the chosen pharmacy.
The AVS and pharmacy instructions can be reprinted at any time from the "After Visit Summary" section (last) in the Discharge Navigator. The same section can be used to reprint the discharge prescriptions.
With the After Visit Summary section open, note how an add icon ("+") can be used to include the "Discharge Medications" (prescription) among the document(s) to be (re-)printed. The remove icon ("x") can be used to de-select other documents for printing.
Unfortunately, there is a catch. The document(s) will print to the designated printer for the patient's current location. This is by design to ensure that support staff on the relevant nursing unit can provide materials to patients being discharged... and to follow their instructions for faxing materials to a pharmacy of choice.
There may be situations when a prescriber needs to direct the prescriptions to a device (printer, PDF or print-fax) in a location distant from the inpatient unit. The prescriber may not be at the patient's discharge location at the time of departure and may need to print, sign and send without returning to the unit.
Answer: The following workflow assumes that the discharge medication reconciliation is complete and that discharge orders are signed. The trigger for printing discharge documents at the nursing station is a signed discharge order.
Use the Discharge Navigator After Visit Summary section, as described above, to select and print the discharge medications. This will print to the nursing station.
The discharge prescription can be reprinted to a local device using the following steps:
- Open the patient's chart (be sure to open to the relevant inpatient encounter).
- Use Chart Search (in Storyboard or at the top right of Hyperspace) with the term "print" to find and "Jump to" the "My Printouts" activity.
- When opened, My Printouts should list all recent print activities initiated by the user's actions, including the most recent. Use the "Print Again" link in the rightmost column of the row for the latest AVS print event.
- This time, a printer selection dialog is presented. Locally attached printers, including "Save to PDF", are available for selection. The rest is as usual for local printing.
