Printing Tips

The Connect Care clinical information system (CIS) has sophisticated printing controls. Some printing tasks are driven by system settings (e.g., label printing), while other tasks use printers mapped to the current workstation in a way that the user may be able to modify. 

This section addresses how to initiate and control printing where manual overrides are possible. 

Printing from Personal Computers using Virtual Local Printer Selections

If a personal computing devices has a consistent location (e.g., professional office or home office), it may be possible to set a local printer for default use with configurable printing tasks. This is done by changing the printer used, often after an automated print task has already occurred, by trying the following steps:

The above technique can be used for all configurable printing tasks.

Printing from Personal Computers using PDF Files

A personal computing device (notebook, tablet or iPad) will typically be unable to find or map to nearby printers in clinical practice areas, and BYOD users will likely not have the necessary permissions or drivers to use the printers. However, there is a workaround where a report (e.g., After Visit Summary) can be saved for printing:

It is essential that this workflow only be performed with approved personal devices that have encrypted storage, and that the PDF files be deleted as soon as the purpose (e.g., billing data transfer) is complete.

Patient Labels

The below tip sheet gives instructions on how to print patient labels, if needed for use with third-party professional billing sheets, special consent forms, or other objects requiring patient identification.

Paper Documentation generated from Connect Care

Situations may arise when a program or facility has some areas launched in Connect Care and others awaiting launch. "Hybrid" states occur when a patient receives care in both Connect Care and non-Connect Care contexts, with part of a patient's experience captured in Connect Care and other parts in legacy systems. Clinicians trained in Connect Care workflows may find themselves needing certain text tools (e.g., structured data entry, speech recognition) when providing service in contexts where the CIS is expected but has yet to launch. Nonetheless all clinical documentation must be rendered and entered to the correct record of care. 

If a Connect Care documentation encounter is used to generate clinical documentation where the legal record of care is paper, the resulting note (e.g., history & physical, consult, discharge, progress) must be printed and placed in the paper chart. Ensure that any printing is done after the relevant note is completed and signed in Connect Care. Once signed follow these additional steps: 

Chart Elements

Sometimes it is useful to print or save specific elements of a patient's chart, such as a medication and allergy list. Many such topic summaries can be printed directly from the Patient Lists activity, as shown in the below tip sheet. The sequence is similar for all chart reports that can be viewed in the lower panel of the List activity when a patient name is selected.

Clinical documentation objects (notes, reports, letters, media) are best printed from the various parts of the Chart Review activity (all contexts).

Test Requisitions

Normally, orders for more complex investigations (e.g., diagnostic imaging, stress test, echocardiogram) are placed within the CIS and automatically route to the correct department for scheduling and fulfillment. However, there will be testing facilities that are not linked to Connect Care during transition periods before Connect Care is fully implemented provincially, and there may remain independent facilities that do not support integrated ordering processes. Physicians need the equivalent of a print process so that the test requisition can be rendered to a form that can be hand-delivered, mailed, faxed or attached to secure email. Care must be taken if working remotely and the requisition needs to be directed to a local printer.

When ordering the investigation or intervention, possibly as part of an "Orders Only" encounter, look for part of the Connect Care order properties referring to where the order will be performed. Select "Other" or "External (Req to Print)" to enforce a workflow for printing the requisition. Complete the rest of the order elements and line up the order with any others pending signature.

Before signing the order(s), make sure that you have changed the default printer to be a local one or otherwise under your control (e.g., print to PDF). Upon signing, the requisition will be printed, faxed or saved as a PDF file for secure email attachment, depending upon the printer configuration choice.

Discharge Documents

The standard Connect Care discharge process is guided by a Discharge Navigator. The easiest way to make sure that things like discharge prescriptions and medication instructions print is to follow all the steps in the navigator (in order). 

At the point that the discharge order is signed, two documents are printed for the patient to take home. An "After Visit Summary" (AVS) includes information about the hospital stay, together with easy to understand alerts to continuing, changed, discontinued and new medications. An accompanying "MedRec for Community Pharmacist" summarizes changes from prior home meds. 

At this point, any new medication prescriptions can either be electronically faxed directly from Connect Care to the patient's preferred pharmacy (no printing or manual signature required), or can be printed with expectation that the prescriber will sign (handwritten "wet" signature) for delivery to the chosen pharmacy. For information on how to send a prescription via direct electronic fax from Connect Care, see the tip sheet.

The AVS and pharmacy instructions can be reprinted at any time from the "After Visit Summary" section (last) in the Discharge Navigator, and the user can select a local printer for this purpose. 

The workflow for reprinting discharge prescriptions depends on whether the user wants to generate a new printout or to resend via direct electronic fax. How to do this is explained in the following FAQs.

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