Urine and Telemedicine
We have a couple dozen clinics in our system (including two urgent cares) and they all converted to Telemedicine when the COVID crisis started. Prior to that, all clinics were performing urine dips, pregs, Strep, Flu, wb glucose, fecal occult etc. There are occasions when the provider still needs to see a telemedicine patient in person, so we've left those tests in the clinics. But, I'm wondering how everyone who has converted to telemedicine is handling lab testing? We have most patients (who aren't seen in clinic) going to a draw station to have their collections performed and then the provider is getting results back next day. I've heard of some systems putting POC tests in their draw stations. I've also heard that there are some systems that went exclusively to tent testing and I'm curios about how the tents are handling blood draws and urine collections.
Thanks for your help.
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We also went to a lot of telemed visits. If the physician needed a urine test or any other POCT done on the patient, they had the patient come to the office and drop off a urine (that was the majority of our tests). The site would register the patient in EPIC for a lab test/allied health visit and they would perform the test. Our biggest issue was them entering the order under the telehealth visit and it getting denied and removed by billing. The lab doesn't get telehealth ADTs so the samples would flag in QML as exceptions. We had them enter the allied health visit, place the order under that visit and it would result under that order in EPIC when the test was performed.
We did have some tent visits especially for vaccines. If they had needed one of the POC tests they perform at the clinic it was performed there and resulted in EPIC or MTE on the glucometer. This was the only time we allowed them to use enter/edit in EPIC vs MTE.
Similar to Adonica's reply. Including issues on how to place the order (which 'account' to use or how to attach the test order to the correct encounter).
Slightly confusing, our 'draw stations' inside of multi-clinic buildings are run by the lab. When those draw stations were staffed by clinic staff then we did perform POCT within the draw stations. But the lab now running/staffing the draw stations removed POCT from the duties. So if the MD sent a telehealth patient to draw station then it had to be collected/performed as a lab test in one of our 4 clinical labs.
However, we also kept some clinics open while closing others for F2F. Those that stayed open agreed to collect and perform POCT if POC orders were put in by the MD (remotely).
We did not collect any swabs, etc., in tents or drive through since we did all the swab covid testing collection through respiratory centers set up for patients who had positive symptoms/screened positive, in order to keep them out of our urgent care clinics which were kept open for sick patients but not showing symptoms of covid.