Physician Order Collection and Enterprise Tracking (POCET)

Strengthen Physician Relationships with Unibased's Physician Portal
Providing much more than just scheduling, Unibased provides greater access and enhanced flexibility to maximize resources and improve communication, ensuring optimal performance for improved physician and consumer satisfaction.  With the Unibased physician portal, ForSite2020® POCET, your physician offices have the convenience, ease and efficiency of access through the web, empowering them to schedule patients at your healthcare facility, and freeing them from the endless phone calls back and forth - saving time to focus on the most important task of all – the delivery of quality care.  

What Access Means for Your Physicians
Now more than ever, it is vital for hospitals to build and maintain strong mutually beneficial relationships with their physicians.  Increased access for physicians into your healthcare organization means improved relationships, increased referrals and revenue, improved scheduler productivity, optimal resource utilization and scheduling efficiency, improved patient and physician satisfaction, and enhanced physician loyalty.  Through POCET, part of the ForSite2020® application suite, your physicians are now connected and are able to conveniently request procedures to be scheduled or actually reserve the appointment date and time, without requiring entry into your hospital’s protected MPI and registration data.  Accessible via the web, web-enabled via Citrix, from within the hospital network or as a link from the hospital web site, your physicians have the convenience and satisfaction of remotely viewing their complete schedules for the day as well as critical patient information related to each scheduled procedure to ensure patient safety and quality care.  The unique approach from Unibased provides access to the entire physician community that practices in or refers to your organization; thus making anytime, anywhere access to view and schedule appointments available to one of your most important customers. 

Physician Access with Electronic Order Creation and Tracking
Just as with the other scheduling capabilities of the ForSite2020® application suite, POCET allows complete enterprise scheduling, searching for available appointments across multiple facilities, sites or departments.  Schedulers are also able to simultaneously create a legible physician order at the time of scheduling, automatically linking the order with the scheduled procedure.  The order is created utilizing information provided in the scheduling process, is completely legible, and can be electronically signed by a user with proper authorization security rights.  The signature can either take the form of the printed name of the physician or a replication of their actual signature, if previously captured by the organization during the setup process and chosen as the signature option.  Either form of the signature is recognized as completely legal due to the use of a proper log-in name and password.  Once the appointment is linked to the registration, the order is attached as well, automatically satisfying the open orders work queue and making the legible order immediately available to the department(s) performing the procedure(s).

Special Features for Surgery
Unibased understands that your surgeon offices have very unique needs when it comes to scheduling and requesting appointments, and require unique elements of physician portal in order for it to work and provide the optimum ease-of-use and patient safety.  With this in mind, Unibased has developed special features for surgeon offices’ physician access to support the scheduling or requesting of surgery procedures, such as unique fields to identify the side of the body of which the incision is to be made required for the surgical "time out" under the JCAHO standards for the Surgical Care Improvement Process (SCIP) as well as the type of anesthesia to be given during a procedure in order to secure the need for an anesthesiologist as a required resource when scheduling.  An additional restriction is available for surgical-type appointments which limit the physician’s office selection to the block time for that physician, if previously allocated.  For those organizations requiring more extensive information to be provided at the time of a schedule or request, ForSite2020® POCET provides the ability to capture extra data specific for surgery such as additional time requested, admission type, expected length of stay, the need for a chest x-ray, if blood is requested, the need for an EKG, and a free text special equipment comments section.  Also provided is the ability to capture specific insurance information such as an insurance phone number, group number, policy number, guarantor name and relationship to the patient, guarantor phone number, and the requestor’s name and phone number.

Overview of Important Features and Benefits:

Incorporate Managed Care Rules
Knowing the restrictions from the payor helps avoid unnecessary write-offs. Important information such as required pre-certifications, number of authorized visits and whether the procedure is limited to an outpatient or inpatient visit are details that should not be overlooked.  ForSite2020® POCET supports these rules and more, down to the individual plan code.

Legible Order Creation
Using ForSite2020® POCET, an electronic order is automatically created as a by-product of the physician’s request for a patient’s appointment.  The ability for your organization to designate the required fields guarantees the necessary information is contained in the request.  In addition, because the order is computer generated from a unique logon and password combination, it meets all requirements for an electronically signed and legible order. 

Integrate Medical Necessity Checks
You and your physicians will know when the requested procedure fails medical necessity… at the time of the request for appointment.  Using an integrated medical necessity file that is updated daily with the newest regulations, you and your physician’s office can work together to be sure the ICD-9 diagnosis code is covered, or immediately indicate to the patient the need for an ABN.

Image Capture
Point-of-service image capture for patient hand-carried orders, insurance cards, or driver’s license may be attached to schedule requests or preregistration displays for storage with other order-based data. They may be stored indefinitely in the ForSite2020® POCET image storage database.

Order Tracking
In order to avoid implications of lost orders, all ForSite2020® POCET orders are monitored until processed in accordance with your predefined completion.  Normally, when an order is assigned to a registration, the patient is accurately identified, and a service date is known, the access management registration components and workflow processes are launched.  Orders not assigned to a registration remain open in the work list.  These open orders may cause a variety of alerts, as needed, until they are assigned.  A permanent audit trail may be retained for processed orders. When integrated with call center management, scheduling and central business office management, tracking will lead to the utilization of services across the continuum.

Clinical Questions
Built as a part of the procedures to be requested from the physician’s office, clinical questions are used to gather the important information necessary to determine if the procedure is right for the patient.  ForSite2020® POCET supports an unlimited number of these questions and can automate a replacement procedure based upon the answer.  For example, a patient for whom an MRI is to be scheduled might be asked if they have a pacemaker. If they answer yes, the clinical question can be built to substitute a recommended replacement procedure of a CT.

Web-Based Access to EMPI
You can incorporate a physician access into your current web site or operate it independently. Physician’s access includes features such as a mini-MPI associated with the physician’s practice or group practice and interactive with your current EMPI. Examples of capabilities are schedule requests, medical necessity checks, managed care rules, favorite’s lists, and clinical questions which are designed to link the combination of orders, diagnosis, procedures, schedules and registrations.

Process Management with New Access Channel
Data received may be segregated into various dynamic status levels for tracking milestone activity completion, allowing you to address the shifting paradigm of economic incentives.  More importantly, ForSite2020® POCET provides a new access channel for your referral base, reducing call center demand and enabling you to better manage your access management workload.  Creating electronically signed physician orders and collection of faxed orders, placing all pre-registration orders into a central repository with real-time, on demand history and status reporting will significantly simplify workflow.

Total HL7 Integration with PHI Security
HL7 integration with your systems and various EMR systems within your physician base. New HITECH and HIPAA regulations are followed, recognizing new federal interactive communication standards.

Faxed Orders Option
Faxed orders are collected and stored either by the ForSite2020® POCET integrated fax server, or your departmental fax server, or a combination. Faxed images may be permanently stored in the POCET image database. Faxed orders are quickly linked to registrations and schedules.

OCR Processing Option
Facsimile orders may be processed through ForSite2020® POCET intelligent OCR module, eliminating the need for interpretation and keying of order information.

Standalone Option
POCET is available independent of the ForSite2020® v7.0 module as a standalone, called POCET Lite. 

JCAHO Requirements
Managing the process related to a physician order for procedure is integral to JCAHO requirements and often a paperwork nightmare.  You can streamline the process by automating the creation of the order as a natural by-product of the request for schedule, eliminate the paper, and append the order to the patient encounter for ease of access across your organization.