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.
At this point, any new medication prescriptions can either be electronically faxed directly from Connect Care to the patient’s preferred pharmacy (no printing or manual signature required), or can be printed with expectation that the prescriber will sign (handwritten "wet" signature) for delivery to the chosen pharmacy. For information on how to send a prescription via direct electronic fax from Connect Care, see the tip sheet.
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. Using this option, due to printing defaults, only a printout can be generated (not another direct electronic fax, even if discharge prescriptions were originally sent that way). The document(s) will default to print to the designated printer for the patient's current location (e.g., nursing station) to allow support staff on the relevant nursing unit to provide materials to patients being discharged and to follow their instructions for manually faxing materials to a pharmacy of choice (if needed).
There may be situations when a prescriber wants to reprint a prescription and needs to direct the prescription to a different device (printer, PDF or print-fax) in a location distant from the inpatient unit. For example, 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, that discharge orders are signed, and that the original discharge documents were already printed at the patient’s 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. (Note: If a discharge prescription was originally sent via direct electronic fax (“Printer Used” = “RIGHTFAX”), it will say “Can’t Reprint” in the “Reprint” column.)
- 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.
If you are wanting to resend a discharge prescription via direct electronic fax, see the separate FAQ: