The medical problem list should be an executive summary of the critical, relevant information in a patient’s electronic health record (EHR). But all too frequently, it’s plagued by cluttered, redundant, and inaccurate information, making a clinician’s job harder, not easier.
In a recent survey of 300 providers regarding the challenges and opportunities surrounding medical problem lists, one participant went so far as to say they felt “hopeless” when taking over a prior primary care provider’s patient (and their cluttered problem list).
Luckily, improvements can be made. In the survey, The problem with the medical problem list: Evaluating its impact and paths to improvement, participants said they saw significant potential in reorganizing medical problem lists to help enhance patient care and alleviate clinician stress.
But that’s just one of IMO Health’s many resources to help clinicians create and access a clear patient story.
Blog | What’s lurking in your EHR?
Reading the patient chart shouldn’t feel like a game of hide and seek. Explore the challenges and upsides of uncovering the best possible data in the medical problem list.
Blog | Filling in gaps in the medical problem list
Applications that improve native EHR workflows make the medical problem list more straightforward. And that’s great news for providers and patients alike.
Blog | In praise of the problem-oriented medical record (POMR)
Listen to this panel discussion with one of IMO Health’s physician informaticists, Jim Thompson, MD, ABIM, ABEM, as the participants discuss tools and strategies to help make problem lists more meaningful.
Is EHR clutter obscuring your patient's story?
Bring patient data into focus with medical problem lists organized for providers.
An eBook, a toolkit, and a study walk into a bar…
And they brainstorm ways to make problem lists work better for clinicians.
eBook | An unlikely remedy: How technology can alleviate the clinician HIT burden
Learn how EHR data can be transformed to streamline clinical workflows and reduce the documentation burden on clinicians.
Toolkit | The problem list toolkit
Like the article you’re reading, this toolkit contains resources to help clinicians and health systems get the most out of their EHR’s medical problem list.
Study | The problem with the medical problem list: Evaluating its impact and paths to improvement
Your eyes aren’t deceiving you – we also mentioned this study at the top of this article. It’s worth mentioning twice. Don’t miss the insights offered by providers like you on how they expect the problem list to improve.
SURVEY
The problem with the medical problem list: Evaluating its impact and paths to improvement
Medical problem list problems? There’s a meme for that.
They say laughter is the best medicine, so maybe our eBook, When bad things happen to good problem lists, is more of the resource you need right now. We meme-ifed some of the most common contributors to problem list headaches, such as:
- Documentation duplication
- Outdated problems
- Lack of standardization
- Clutter
- Siloed data
- Lack of specificity
- Rigid displays
Download now to chuckle (and maybe commiserate) with your fellow clinicians.
Smart solutions to manage your medical problem list
Ready for some strategic fixes to help cure your problem list challenges? We’ve got you covered in the blogs below:
Blog | The problem with the medical problem list
Discover why the problem list is often disjointed and needlessly complex – then we make the case for better organization.
Blog | Four steps to a more effective medical problem list
Explore four ways to transform this essential EHR component into a more clinically meaningful and helpful tool.
Blog | Making the medical problem list problem-oriented
Learn how to address some common problem list management issues with tools that make it easy to organize information and filter for the most critical material first.
Last, but not least, HCCs
We understand that many providers are concerned with the accurate and granular capture of Hierarchical Condition Category (HCC) codes during clinical documentation. After all, specificity is essential if these codes are to reflect the full scope of a patient’s condition. Without that detail, gaps occur in the medical record that may hinder patient care and stand in the way of optimized reimbursement.
Watch the webinars below to learn how to streamline HCC capture and help clinicians document with specificity while connecting to the appropriate administrative codes.
On-demand webinar | Undercoded & underpaid: Making it easier to document to optimize reimbursement
Join IMO Health’s VP of Global Clinical Services, June Bronnert, MHI, RHIA, CSS, CSS-P as she discusses how to simplify precise documentation for clinicians; the effects of imprecise coding on reimbursement; and how third-party solutions integrated into the EHR can lessen the burdens associated with documentation.
On-demand webinar | How to better identify HCCs in the EHR
Watch this webinar as IMO Health experts explore how to minimize monetary loss due to poorly captured HCCs; leverage the EHR to support specificity in documentation; and gain better HCC data at the point-of-care for a more complete picture of a patient population.
Now that you’re empowered with all of that knowledge, take a step towards easing your problem list problems. Chat with an IMO Health expert today to learn how solutions like IMO Core and IMO Discovery for Problems can help optimize the problem list to display a coherent and meaningful patient story for providers.
