Consults

Consults are requests from one clinician to a hospital, service or specialty for a procedure or other service.

The Consults process involves the following steps.

1. The clinician orders a consult. From within the patient's CPRS medical record, the clinician enters an order for a consultation or procedure. The ordering clinician may first have to enter Encounter Information.

2. The consult service receives an alert and a printed SF 513. The receiving service can then accept the consult, forward it to another service, or send it back to the originating clinician for more information.

3. The consult service accepts or rejects the consult request. To accept the consult, the service uses the receive action. The service can also discontinue or cancel the consult. Cancelled consults can be edited and resubmitted by the ordering clinician. A consult service clinician sees the patient.

The consult service enters results and comments. Resulting is primarily handled through TIU.

4. The originating clinician receives a CONSULT/REQUEST UPDATED alert that the consult is complete. The results can now be examined and further action can be taken on behalf of the patient.

5. The SF 513 report becomes part of the patient's medical record. A hard copy can be filed and the electronic copy is on line for paperless access.

6. Results from the Medicine package can be attached to complete consults involving procedures. This function is available through the GUI for the Consults package, but will only be seen when the supporting Consults patch GMRC*3.0*15 is installed. The absence of these patches will result only in the function not being present.

7. If Consults patch GMRC*3.0*18 has been installed, the Edit/Resubmit action is available for cancelled consults. The consult must be "resubmittable" and the user must be authorized to resubmit consults.

8. The Consults tab has a list of consults in a tree view similar to the ones found on the Notes tab and the Discharge Summary tab. However, the list view feature is not available due to differences in the tabs functions. Consults are differentiated from procedures in the tree by the type of icon displayed. Consults are represented by a notepad icon while procedures are represented by a caduceus-like icon.

9. Right-click in the Consults text and you may select the "Find in Selected Consult" option from the popup menu. This option allows you to search the displayed text. A "Replace Text" option is also available, but it is only active when a consult is being edited.

10. The field below the list of consults displays a list of documents related to the highlighted consult or procedure. These related documents are also in a tree view.