Healthy Holidays

Tis the Season: A Holiday Poem

Tis the season... fever season, cold season, flu season,

Snow season, hot cocoa season, me and you season.

A season for gift-giving and spending time with friends,

And awkward family dinners that never seem to end.

But a midst this time of Winter Perfection,

Take some time for this year's reflection.

Think of all the people you've seen,

The healthy, the sick, and those in between.

Maybe you're the one who treats their ills.

Maybe you're the one who handles their bills.

Either way, you've helped them out.

You've helped treat everything from headaches to gout.

Though you may not see it, the work you've done,

For those people now sharing the season's fun.

You gave them the greatest gift you could give:

A healthier future for the life that they live.

To sum it all up, here's what I mean:

Thank you for all you've done in 2013!

Happy Holidays from GVT

Written by: Kylie McKenzie Soder

Preferred Language

Rexpert is taking steps to incorporate support for Meaningful Use core measure #7. One way we're doing this is by adding Ethnicity to Account Registration. Continuing with the January, 2014, update, the option to choose a Preferred Language, as well as the need for an Interpreter, will be available.

As with ethnicity, we will transition all your previously entered language information over to the new field as best we can.This may seem like a hassle, but (besides being required by law) a list of universal language codes makes the required transfer of data from system to system possible. (Which is slightly ironic, if you think about it... we're creating a new system of symbols to represent various languages. In other words, we're creating an entirely new universal language to categorize non-universal languages. Personally, I think that's hilarious... anyway, back to the important stuff...)

To support this, a new Language Maintenance table will be available to maintain the ISO 639.2 standard language codes:


Note: Care is required when editing a language code. These codes are a part of a standardized government list, and have been selected for easy translation between systems. Contact Client Services if you have any questions or need help editing language codes.


At the moment, the default value for the Preferred Language field in Account Registration is English. This can be changed. If, for example, the majority of patients you see are Spanish or Russian speakers, contact Client Services to change the default preferred language for your practice.

Also, as a reminder from last week's blog post, once these changes are implemented into Rexpert, some changes will have to be made on your end as well:

• Be sure to update your encounter forms to include race, ethnicity, preferred language, interpreter required, and sex (as opposed to gender).
• Once you have made these changes, please print out a copy, black out identifying information, show us where you want ethnicity/race/language to appear, and fax it to 775-618-1358.

These updates are in an effort to make medical care easily accessible to everyone. If you have any suggestions or ideas that can help the process, let us know by contacting Client Services using the Feedback button or leave a Comment below.

Written by: Kylie McKenzie Soder

Ethnicity

Meaningful Use outlines twenty-four required objectives. Of the fourteen core measures, objective number seven regulates that both ethnicity AND race must be supplied by patients. There are no exclusions.

Rexpert needs to support Meaningful Use, so with the release of Rexpert 10 (R10), Account Registration has been updated to contain and specify these two fields.

The acceptable values for ethnicity are:

Note: Any account that fails to collect race or ethnicity data, thus recorded as Unspecified, will be suspended. However, patients may choose to not specify a race or ethnicity. This choice will be recorded as Refused to Specify and this will not suspend the account.

Now that Rexpert has been updated, we've done all we can on our end. Now, it’s up to you to implement this change into your practice. Here’s what you need to do:

• If Hispanic is listed as a Race on your encounter forms and/or in your Race table, you will need to remove it. According to Meaningful Use, Hispanic is not a race. Note: For all patients recorded in the system as a Hispanic race, we will change this field to an unspecified race. This field can then be updated at the time of the patient’s next appointment. This is confusing enough to us, and can be doubly so to patients who have grown up identifying their race as Hispanic. We have found a very good resource at WireQH which gives you scripts to follow when discussing this with your patients. This will be especially helpful to the front desk workers who need to directly interact with people who may be frustrated or upset.
• Be sure to update your encounter forms to include race, ethnicity, preferred language (to appear in the next release), interpreter required, and sex (as opposed to gender).
• Once you have made these changes, please print out a copy, black out identifying information, show us where you want ethnicity/race/language to appear, and fax it to 775-618-1358.

Why does this matter?  These questions are sometimes uncomfortable to ask and can make patients or staff feel awkward.  The NIH has a paper on this subject. The conclusion?  "If HCOs make a commitment to systematically collect race/ethnicity and language data from patients, it would be a major step in enhancing the ability of HCOs to monitor health care processes and outcomes for different population groups, target quality initiatives more efficiently and effectively, and provide patient-centered care."  We can only hope they are right!

Do you have any thoughts on the subject? Let us know in the Comment section below. And, as always, contact Client Services via the Feedback button if you have any questions, comments, or good ideas to share.