Renalware User Guide -- Letters Module
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Letters Module
Letter Creation
Letters are one of the most powerful components of Renalware as they create an extensive record of the patient’s history with details of the patient’s Problem List, Medications, Observations and Pathology results at the time of the letter creation.
Letters can be created from the Letters page (choosing Clinical Letter, Clinic Visit Letter or Simple Letter). Simple Letters do not display Problem List, Medications or Pathology Results. A Clinical Letter will generate a letter not linked to a particular clinic visit.
Clinic Visit Letters
These are among the most common and important letters generated in Renalware.
Once a Clinic Visit has been created, a letter can be created from the Clinic Visit list for that patient (Clinic Visits in the Left Gutter) or from the complete list of Clinic Visits (under Renal in the top menu bar) which can be filtered by Clinic, Clinician and a Date Range.
Selecting Draft Letter will start the Letter Creation. As can be seen in the sample below, the information from the Clinic Visit (BP, weight, etc) will be displayed at the top of the page as an aide memoire including any notes made by the clinician at the time of the visit. The data from the clinic visit is then automatically inserted into the body of the letter.
The fields for the letter type (Letterhead and Topic) will need to be selected but, if you are doing a series of letters related for example to the same clinic, these fields will be auto-populated in subsequent letters. The primary recipient of the letter defaults to the GP with copy to the patient unless they have opted out of receiving copies of their letters. The Primary Recipient is easily changed to be the Patient (in which case the letter is copied to the GP).
After the letter is composed, electronic CCs can be added. Any CC from the patient’s Contacts in the Directory and electronic CC (any Renalware) can be selected at this stage. Named Nurses automatically receive an electronic CC of all letters on their patients.
The Notes from the Clinic Visit can be selected to appear in the body of the letter or a Snippet from your or anyone else’s Snippet list can be selected. Equally Voice Recognition with Direct Dictation can be used to complete the body of the letter. Once the letter is completed, click on Create and the formatted letter is then displayed.
This can be then Submitted for Review so will appear on the Author and, if different, the typist’s Dashboard. Draft and Unarchived letters also appear in the patient’s Clinical Summary screen and the Letters screen. The author than can review the letter, make any required changes and then can Approve and Archive. The user is warned that, once Archived, a letter cannot be retrieved and will be sent electronically to the Trust EPR and usually the GP surgery and will be available for printing as required by the secretarial team.
Letters for Printing
Although Letters in Draft and Awaiting Review can be printed to create a hard copy, Printing an Archived Letter changes the Letter status to Completed to indicate that the letter requires no further action. Archived letters awaiting printing can be found in Letters under the Renal function in the top menu bar. This list can be filtered to find letters in a particular state (for printing usually will be Archived (Ready to Print) and letters can be batched printed and also Envelope Printed if using a Envelope Stuffer. The system will calculate the number of copies of a letter required; for example, if the letter has been emailed to the GP and is only being sent to the patient, a single copy will be required whereas another letter may not have been emailed to the GP surgery and also have 2 CCs so will require 4 copies.
From the Letters list one can view, print, and mark as printed (these options depend upon a letter’s current status). The following screenshot displays the options for a letter marked APPROVED.
Note that the Download option at top allows the user to download a copy of the letter in either PDF or RTF format.
Ideally at the end of each day, all Archived letters will have been printed to ensure that letters are received by all recipients as quickly as possible. The database can calculate the time from Clinic Visit or Letter Creation to Completion by patient or clinic type, author or typist.
Electronic Letter Transmission
Depending on systems integration within local IT systems, letters created within Renalware may be sent automatically to the main hospital EPR system and/or to GP practices.