7. Clinical Summaries

This lesson will demonstrate the steps necessary to meet the Meaningful Use requirement for providing clinical summaries to patients.

Version:

SOAPware 2011 or later must be used.

Note: To determine the version of SOAPware being used, Click on Help > About SOAPware. This will open a window which will show the version and build of SOAPware currently in use.

Dashboard:

This requirement will be tracked in the MU Patient Dashboard and the Meaningful Use Dashboard.

Measure Criteria

Objective:  Provide clinical summaries for patients for each office visit.

Measure:  Clinical summaries provided to patients for more than 50% of all office visits within 3 business days.

For more detailed information on this measure, please click on the "Reference" link below. This CMS documentation includes information on exclusions, attestation requirements, a definition of terms and important additional information.

CLICK TO VIEW THE CMS DOCUMENTATION ON THIS MEASURE:

Reference CMS: Clinical Summaries

Measure Calculation

Denominator: The number of face-to-face encounters that occur during the reporting period.

Note: This measure is not defined by the unique patient; however it is defined by the total number of face-to-face encounters that occurred during the reporting period.

Numerator: The number of face-to-face encounters in the denominator for which the appropriate workflow was taken, in order to provide a clinical summary to the patient within 3 business days.  

Threshold: The resulting percentage must be more than 50% of all office visits.

* Scoring is individual, provider-based and not practice-wide.  Denominator and Numerator are based on the SOAPnote encoutner Owner.

Providing a Clinical Summary

There are two methods that can be used to provide a clinical/medical summary to patients:

1.  Using a CCR (Continuity of Care Record)

2.  Using an Available Document Design

To learn how to provide a clinical summary to patients using either of the two methods listed above, see: Clinical Summaries for Each Office Visit.

MU Patient Dashboard

MU Patient Dashboard

This measure is tracked in the MU Patient Dashboard under "Clinical Summaries".  In SOAPware versions prior to 2012.0.313, this item will be listed in the Patient MU Dashboard as "Medical Summary".

The Patient Dashboard can be viewed by selecting View > MU Patient Dashboard.  Once a Medical Summary has been provided for the active SOAPnote the MU Patient Dashboard icon will change to a green check mark.

*Remember: This meaningful use measure requires that a clinical summary be provided to all patients for more than 50% of all office visits within 3 business days.  Therefore, this MU Patient Dashboard item is specific to each Face-to-Face SOAPnote and will only increase your numerator statistic if the summary was provided within 3 business days of the date of the encounter.

Note: The MU Patient Dashboard will be grayed out if there are no SOAPnote encounters.  It will also remain grayed out if the active SOAPnote encounter is signed off or if the SOAPnote encounter is a Non Face-to-Face encounter.

Meaningful Use Dashboard

Meaningful Use Dashboard

This measure is tracked in the Meaningful Use Dashboard under "Clinical Summaries".   In SOAPware versions prior to 2012.0.313, this item will be listed in the Patient MU Dashboard as "Medical Summary".

The Meaningful Use Dashboard can be accessed by selecting SOAPware > Meaningful Use Dashboard.

The Meaningful Use Dashboard will display the Numerator, Denominator and percentage for this measure, as well as, graph the Trend for the dates selected.  Please see the following link for instructions on using the Meaningful Use Dashboard: Meaningful Use Dashboard.

*Note: The dashboard icon will display a gray X if the threshold for this measure has not been met for the selected reporting period.  The icon will change to a green check mark once the threshold for the meaningful use measure has been met.