Physician Communication, Faxing?

[cmarn]

Trying to come up with some ways to simplfy physician communication, especially at Start of Care. Currently our agency gets a referral from the hospital, phones the primary to verify he will sign orders, sees the patient, calls the primary back to get orders, mails the 485...etc. A lot of the doctors complain about the calls, faxes, etc.

Truthfully, I have to wonder how many nurses are actually calling the doctors and getting all of the orders OR at the most are they leaving a voice mail with the nurse saying that we are seeing the patient? I would just be interested in coming up with a fax at start of care that has the complete orders for the doc to sign until we get the 485. Any thoughts? I wonder if this would be more efficient/less...take more time or less?

What are others doing that works?

[caliotter3]

A field nurse not involved with SOC. When one of my agencies was very lax about following up with supplemental physician orders, I started mailing the original to the doctor with a copy to the office. Nothing was ever said to me so I just assumed that someone didn't care that I was doing their job for them. I thought that agencies used "boiler plate" faxes to the doctor at SOC. That is certainly what I would do. You get a 485 to start out with and it can be revised as needed.