Best Practices for Tracking & Monitoring Coronavirus Exposures using the Agility® Software Solution

We’ve been thinking about what we can do to help as the provider of a documentation solution designed to monitor the wellness of healthcare employees, Agility®, and believe that sharing best practices we’ve picked up from our customers may be the best approach.  So here comes the first in a series that could provide value to your work.

Supporting a Busy Urgent Care Clinic in Los Angeles

Reliant Urgent Care has a clinic at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), one of the most heavily trafficked airports in the country. Reliant’s staff are under pressure to see a mounting number of patients, as well as screen and test hundreds of employees.

In addition to caring for 500 patients a day, Reliant has been asked to screen and test employees for an airline company and other travel businesses, such as hotels. CEO Gene Howell has had to act rapidly to put in processes to protect his employees and segregate patients with Coronavirus symptoms.

Flexible Pop Up Alerts

Howell is a black belt Agility EMR user and is making use of the system’s flexibility to adapt to the current situation.

For instance, Howell is creating customized charting wizard alerts and establishing clinical guidelines that notify providers if a patient meets predefined criteria. The alerts are meant to signal clinicians, based on the patient’s answer, that the patient should be segregated immediately.

Howell says he likes the fact that Reliant can easily adapt the screening questions, which the CDC is continually changing as conditions warrant. “Right now, the CDC requires clinicians to ask if patients have traveled in the past month, but if the CDC suddenly changes the length of time to three days, the question can easily be updated, which makes our lives so much easier,” he says.

Quick Load

Howell is working with a lab that can communicate with Agility. Reliant has converted a portion of their administrative offices into space dedicated to testing where patients are sent as soon as they are identified with symptoms, to keep them out of the general waiting rooms. His staff are able to administer tests for both the A and B flu viruses, and soon, they will be able to test for Coronavirus as well.

“We can test hundreds of people and then quickly load them later into the system,” he says. “This allows us to segregate and test each symptomatic patient right away rather than have them go through a full-blown registration process in the front office, which takes time and increases the risk for exposure to other patients.”

Howell noted that Agility’s quick load process also makes it easier for Reliant to screen off site at employer locations because clinicians can quickly enter the data from the screenings and tests when they return to the clinic. Using quick loading, clinicians only have to enter the data for the test or the exposure one time. Then they click on the name of each patient who took the test or was exposed, and each patient’s file is automatically updated with the information. “That saves us so much time,” Howell says.

Other Capabilities

We want to make sure you are taking advantage of the full range of Agility capabilities that can support your healthcare business during this crisis, including the following:

• Keep track of which employees have complied with the respirator fitness test requirement. We know that you will be concerned about protecting your employees from exposure to the Coronavirus. Agility enables you to record what size and type of respirator your employee needs and track compliance with testing requirements, which can help you quickly identify those employees who have not been fit-tested and need a respirator.
• Make sure your employees have all the right immunizations and vaccinations. You are tasked with ensuring that hundreds, if not thousands, of employees receive the proper immunizations, screenings, wellness checks and care—and that all these activities are tracked and reported for compliance purposes. We know that complying with these requirements could become more challenging to manage during this crisis. Agility can make this process easier and more efficient so that you can ensure that the health of your employees and your patients are not compromised when they could potentially be exposed to the Coronavirus.
• Make sure your employees who have been exposed to Coronavirus are following your workplace procedures. You can efficiently track your employees’ post-exposure adherence to required actions, such as testing and self-quarantine, within a recommended timeframe.
• Keep records that prove you followed guidelines for notifying authorities about exposures to the Coronavirus. Every time you send an email about a patient or employee to a public health organization, the system will automatically generate a PHI record of disclosure that you can present if you are audited.

Whether you are an employee health, occupational medicine or urgent care clinic, we know that exposure-tracking is top of mind for you more than ever. We wish the best for your organization as the crisis continues to unfold.

If you would benefit from a deeper discussion on any of the topics covered here, please email info@nethealth.com.

Net Health wishes to express our gratitude for healthcare professionals who are putting their health on the line every day to care for patients suspected of having the Coronavirus.