Generating Downtime Forms for Meditech

Since you are now creating down time forms that match your current Meditech screens and flow (instead of trying to make your pre-Meditech implementation paper documentation work as your downtime forms) I'd suggest using the forms builder in MS Word.
I'd also suggest posting to the meditech L listserve.
Good Luck!

Not sure if you are Magic or CS. Our hospital has been documenting in PCS on our inpatient units for about 7 years. Our policy states that the nurses document all meds / assessments in Meditech once the system is available. If we are done less than 6 hrs then the nrsg staff document in Meditech. If we are down more than 6 hours then the nursing staff can begin documenting on downtime forms. Our MAR is a scripted routine that prints an NPR report to the floors before all downtimes. for assesments, we print the assesment report from PCS dictionaries. There are "master" coipes of the most common assesments that are kept on the floor for the nurses to make multiple xerox for each patient prior to dowtimes. Most units have prepared downtime packets. However, most of our downtimes are less than 6 hours so about the only time nurses need document assessments on paper downtime forms are for version updates.

I am interested to know what is your criteria of choosing 6 hours as parameter. We are on C/S platform and also on BMV - scanning.

Thanks,
Diana

The 6 hour parameter has existed prior to my employment. So I am not sure of the logic but what I think is ..

Our monthly scheduled downtimes start at 11pm with the expectation that we would have the system available by 4am. On average, it takes about 6hrs considering that we are not just taking Meditech code but also server patches and other system changes as well.

In addition shift change, occurs at 6:30 am, if we run past 4am and do not have Meditech is available. Beyond that time would not give clinical staff enough time to document before shift change. 4 am is a bit of hard time to allow the clinicians significant enough time to document.

We are in the process of implementing BMV however we have been on the EMAR for several years. Prior to each downtime, we print the current MAR for each patient. The nurses will typically document administrations in Meditech was the system is available however the documentation can remain on paper if downtime is more than 6 hrs.