Registry: Paper Point-of-Care Tool
The primary information delivery mechanism for improving patient care was the paper point-of-care worksheet that was carried into patient-provider office visit to both inform the patient as well as obtain patient diabetes care information. After the doctor’s patient encounter, the information on the worksheet would be entered into an online version of this same form (View online version of the point-or-care tool).
The following illustrates where in the usage scenario this paper point-of-care tool is used. This portion of the usage scenario is outlined in red.
Long-Form Paper Point-of-Care Worksheet: The long-form of the paper point-of-care tool presented information in the format of: 1) a guideline or recommendation, 2) patient data and prompts for new data, 3) suggested action based on computed data from the database for that guideline. ( See the table of text messages to appear for each guideline and corresponding prompt/action.) Each guideline and prompt-to-action was color coded and indicated by the symbols, for information, and, for alert. It's assumed that these symbols could be easily scanned at quick glance while in the patient counseling setting. The following is a screen shot of the paper point-of-care worksheet. (view PDF long-form paper point-of-care tool).
Short-Form Paper Point-of-Care Worksheet: User complaints were voiced that the long form version of the paper point-of-care tool were not in the optimal order of importance for the patient visit and these forms were too bulky to file in the paper archive. Therefore, a shorter form of the paper point-of-care tool was designed and used at the Santa Cruz Women’s Health Center.
The shorter form was reduced to a single page and included both diabetes registry fields, as well as other fields a physician would use to complete a more generic point-of-care patient visit. The overall goal was to make the capture of diabetes registry information more effortless, and hence, improve adoption. In addition, this hybrid form addressed some of the purported sequencing problems of data elements on the original paper visit form, to more closely match the workflow of the clinician-to-patient interaction.
The following is a screen shot of the short-form version of the paper point-of-care tool (view PDF short-form paper point-of-care tool).
Related links:
Long-form paper point-of-care tool
Short-form paper point-of-care tool
Point-of-care usability assessment survey of the electronic point-of-care tool
Point-of-care usability assessment survey of the paper point-of-care tool
March 2007 Presentation of usability assessment of paper and electronic point-of-care tools