We are getting ready to go from paper to computer. For Outpatients, typically the patient comes on day 1 for type and screen and sometimes comes back the next day for transfusion. When they come back on a different day, a new account is established for that day.

 

For SoftBank users, how do you manage this process? If RC are ordered on a different day, they will not link to the original type and screen order.

 

I understand there are 2 workarounds for this and I am curious what other users do and why:

 

1. use an alternate # at issue so the bill goes to the correct account.

2. order a no charge type and screen on the new account and re-enter the original results from day of testing.

 

Thanks,

Colleen

 

We have SoftBank and Epic as our HIS. We are having GREAT difficulty with this, because of the way the Epic handles outpatients (their account expires at midnight)

The way you can handle it in SoftBank is to merge the stays: merge today's stay to yesteday's stay (which has the Type and Screen), but this may not work with your HIS. And the unit information never posts for us, which is a problem.

After months of struggling with this, we are now creating a new 3 day outpatient lab encounter in our HIS to handle these patients because we have not been able to come up with an adequate workaround in SoftBank for this.

Hi Colleen,

We use SoftBank and have encountered this same issue with our oncology clinic, and preadmission testing patients. We use the alternate billing number option so the billing for the units go on the correct account.

 

Susan

Our institution assigns a reoccurring billing number to OP transfusion and chemo patients that they have for the calendar month. That way we can do the work-up with the same number as the transfusion.

Thanks for your input. When the floor presents with the pick up slip we will use option #1- because the current account number is on the slip and we will enter it as the alternate account number when we issue in SoftBank. Next I have to ask how to fix it if someone forgets this step!

      We have, for our outpatient transfusion, a monthly account so we can do the type and crossmatch on the day the patient has their blood drawn and issue it the next day under the same account number. The only time we have a problem is if they come in the last day of the month and are getting transfused in the next month. We the use the work around by using the new billing number as the alternate number. Our hospital system is Paragon and we have Softbank.

     Our only problem with using the alternate billing number is that when the transfusion slips are placed in the electronic medical record it goes with the lab work and not with the transfusion billing number.

We currently use option #1, the Alt billing number.  I have been trying to get multi-day outpatient account numbers.  We are implementing Epic EHR and I already put that out for consideration.  It may never happen but at least I tried.

Edited August 27, 201311 yr by bmarotto

 

We currently use option #1, the Alt billing number.  I have been trying to get multi-day outpatient account numbers.  We are implementing Epic EHR and I already put that out for consideration.  It may never happen but at least I tried.

 

Please keep trying! We are also trying to get a 4 day reg with Epic for our outpatients. There must be some Epic site out there that has accomplished this since it is a long standing issue for Blood Bankers.

We use accounts that are good for 3 days most of the time. Some times the patient has a new account number for transfusion. In those cases we order red cells on that account and add a comment that Crossmatch was performed using Type and screen collected on such and such date and specimen number. This has worked well..