Many times I have said that no requirement is ever removed, only added to the practitioner’s workload. Well, I’m happy to say that I stand corrected! Please look out your window, you don’t want to miss the pigs flying by.
I’d like to celebrate an improvement related to co-signature requirements for nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs). In the past, all orders and notes had to be cosigned because of the way Epic was configured. Our Epic analysts in Information Services were able to reconfigure the system in such a way that only the co-signatures required by the Medical Staff Rules and Regulation for PAs and NPs will have to be cosigned. This will take effect December 5th and greatly reduce the co-signatures collaborating physicians have to do.
For PAs, the admit order, the H&P and the D/C summary have to be cosigned. Other orders do not require co-signature and will no longer be sent to the collaborative physician’s inbasket for that purpose.
For NPs, only the H&P and the D/C summary have to be cosigned.
The small ‘cosignature’ box will remain available in case an NP or PA wants to have a document cosigned for his/her own purposes, but it will be optional except as mentioned above. We will be reaching out to PAs and NPs prior to the Dec. 5 go-live to make sure that they understand the future state.
As always, your comments and questions are welcomed.