Sign Off Multiple Documents, Multiple Patients

Signing Off on Multiple Documents

There is often a need for SOAPware providers who are the owners of documents to sign off large groups of documents in one action. For example, in most clinics, paper documents come to the clinician's attention prior to having been scanned. The Clinician signs off the paper document and then the paper document (with the signature) is scanned into the electronic chart. Unfortunately, the emerging rules for electronic signature and the standard for the "Legal Electronic Health Record" are potentially in conflict with this workflow because there are requirements to have an electronic log of the date/times associated with signatures. The solution is to implement use of the Tasks Manager in a fashion so that the documents can be signed-off in a group, all at once, with a single action.

Establish Efficient Workflows

Establish Efficient Workflows

Establish workflows so that any documents that need to be signed in bulk have a common characteristic in one of the Tasks Manager columns. For example, it could simply be to select Sign as the option in the Action/Status column. Then, clicking on the Action/Status header will group all the documents that need to be signed.

Group Items

Group Items

Once the items that need to be signed-off as a group are clustered together, the next step is to select all of them. To do this, click in the gray box at the far left of the first row. Next, hold down the Shift key and click in the gray box at the far left on the last item in the group. Doing this selects all the items between the two clicks (while holding down the shift key).

Sign

Sign

Once all the items to sign-off are selected, then click on the Sign Off button. This results in all of the selected documents being signed off in one action.

Using the Ctrl Key to Select Multiple Tasks

Ctrl to Sign

You can also use the Ctrl key to select multiple items to Sign.  Select the first item you wish to sign, then hold down the Ctrl key while selecting additional items.  Once all the items you wish to sign are selected, click the Sign Off button.

Group by Column

Group by Column

Simply drag the Action/Status Column up to the location of "Drag a colum header here to group that by column" and the items are instantly grouped for selection and sign-off.

Task Sorted by Type

Task Sorted by Type

The tasks are all grouped by Action/Status type, allowing the user to view only one type at a time, or all types.

Expand Type

Expand Type

To see all of the items of one type (i.e. Sign), Click the expander node next to the Type and a list of the items of that group will drop down into view.

Before the scanning person or nurse sends the documents to the clinician's list for final sign-off, establish a workflow where that person changes the status in item of a task item so that the clinician can sort all the documents needing signing to all be in one place. This makes it possible to sign all of them in bulk without having to search around.