American Diabetes Month: NextGen EHR Tips

November 6, 2018

October is American Diabetes Month. As we enter into the holiday season, give thanks for the blessings we have been fortunate enough to enjoy, and show our love for those around us, we also encourage you to think about your own health and the health of those closest to you.

Type II Diabetes is a preventable disease that can be avoided with proper nutrition and a healthy exercise routine. A large part of warding off diabetes is educating ourselves, our family members, and – for healthcare providers – our patients about the ways we can each prevent this devastating disease.

Here are some tips that can assist in spotting trends and have a meaningful impact educating patients.

NextGen’s Chronic Condition HPI

NextGen’s Chronic Condition HPI template is perfect for addressing the follow up and management of any chronic condition, including Diabetes. It is used to track all of the patient’s chronic conditions and since Diabetes often is accompanied by “co-morbidities” – these are chronic problems that tend to lead towards significant health issues when paired with other chronic conditions.

For example, a diabetic patient may tend to be obese. In many cases, obesity can lead to heart disease or back problems. You will often see Diabetics with heart disease, hypertension, high levels of cholesterol or even BH problems. So, tracking just Diabetes is usually a matter of monitoring multiple chronic diseases.

For this reason, the Chronic Conditions HPI template allows you to pull the patient’s chronic conditions from the problem list and displays all of them within the side menu of the HPI template. The provider can highlight a problem – in this case, Diabetes – and document if the patient is experiencing any problems with medications, following their diet, checking their feet, etc.

Data entered into the HPI can copy forward to the next encounter, saving the provider tons of time the next time he sees the patient. Without leaving the HPI template, the provider can select the next problem on the list he wants to address and document again, right from there. This is what makes this such a time-saver!

Additionally, most common problems are pre-loaded with Screening Conditions which allows the Provider to use these questions as a template to discuss the problem with the patient and assess levels of compliance. He will see a historic grid of responses, which allows him to spot trends.

Since labs are often reviewed in alignment with a Diabetes office visit, they are also displayed in the HPI template (along with meds and other useful information), so it serves as one-stop shopping which will cover a ton of information.