Optimize Patient Intake
Patient intake is how care delivery organizations ensure they have everything they need from a patient before an encounter. Historically, this typically consists of manual processes to gather and verify important information including demographics, billing and insurance, medical histories, and consents; however, it can and should be so much more than that. Current data continues to support the idea that traditional patient intake is a consumer pain point. Canvas’s extensibility enables you to differentiate your care model by leveraging external data to create operational efficiencies and better the patient experience.
What you’ll learn #
In this guide, you will learn how to do the following:
- Write your patient profiles to Canvas
- Surface custom data points in the Canvas UI
- Incorporate patient collected data with Questionnaires
- Supercharge your patient onboarding with Canvas + Zus
1. Write your patient profiles to Canvas #
Whether you are sourcing patients from your direct-to-consumer site, getting patient lists through a payer relationship, and/or leveraging a CRM, our FHIR API will enable you to create and update your patient profiles within Canvas with all of the necessary demographic information to get started. The endpoints listed below are the most commonly utilized to do so. Work with your team to map out how you can leverage the FHIR API to create efficiencies in your onboarding flow.
FHIR Patient: The create and update endpoints allow you to sync patients’ demographic data, including addresses, contact methods, patient preferences, patient contacts, and more. The identifier attribute on the patient resource is a great place to store unique identifiers and additional data for that patient that does not fit elsewhere (like an internal MRN or program membership levels). You can use the identifier attribute to store multiple values. Identifiers are not visible within the profile; however, you can use the protocol below to display them.
FHIR Coverage: Whether you are billing to commercial insurance plans, or need to add custom employer-based coverages, the Coverage endpoint can be leveraged to add a patient’s coverage information. We populate the initial list of available insurers through our integration with ClaimMD. Additional coverage options such as employee programs can be added and updated following these steps. You will need the IDs to write coverages.
FHIR Consent: Consents also have to be configured before they can be added through the API. The ConsentCoding cannot be changed once created, so make sure to configure your consents with that in mind. In addition to recording the consent, you can attach a PDF version using the sourceAttachment attribute.
2. Surface custom data points #
The identifier attribute on the patient profile can be used to store data points that are not currently represented in Canvas’s data model. You can add multiple values, including internal identifiers, program information, or status within a measurement group.
Although identifiers added through the API do not display in the Canvas UI by default, you can insert a banner alert protocol like the one below, to surface the information to your end users. You can update both alertplacement and alertintent in the code below as needed, see here, for more information on possible configurations for the banner alerts.
from canvas_workflow_kit.protocol import (
ClinicalQualityMeasure,
ProtocolResult,
STATUS_DUE,
)
from canvas_workflow_kit.constants import CHANGE_TYPE
from canvas_workflow_kit.intervention import BannerAlertIntervention
class ExternalIdentifierBanner(ClinicalQualityMeasure):
class Meta:
title = 'External Identifier Banner'
description = 'Display any external identifiers in a banner'
version = '2022-05-10v8'
types = ['Banner']
compute_on_change_types = [CHANGE_TYPE.PATIENT]
def compute_results(self):
result = ProtocolResult()
external_identifiers = self.patient.patient["externalIdentifiers"]
if len(external_identifiers):
result.status = STATUS_DUE
result.due_in = -1
for external_identifier in external_identifiers:
result.recommendations.append(
BannerAlertIntervention(
narrative=(f"{external_identifier['system']}: {external_identifier['value']}"),
placement=['profile'],
intent='info')
)
return result
3. Incorporate patient collected data with Questionnaires #
Questionnaires in Canvas represent a structured set of questions intended to guide the collection of answers from end-users and promote consistent data collection. They support many workflows, from evidence-based assessments to completely custom forms and templates. Your team can utilize our no-code google sheet template to build, update, and load questionnaires into Canvas. When buidling your questionnaires, make sure to use unique codes, using our supported code systems, so that they can be leveraged in the FHIR API and with protocols.
Questionnaires can be added to an upcoming appointment or open encounter by adding an encounter reference. The FHIR Encounter Search endpoint can be used to obtain the encounter_id.
"encounter": {
"reference": "Encounter/(encounter_id)"
}
Canvas Notes are meant to be collaborative and authored by multiple people, including the patient. When adding patient-collected data you can set the author reference to Patient/{patient_id}. Doing so will then be visible within the command history tool-tip in the note.
4. Supercharge your patient onboarding with Canvas + Zus #
If you still find that your care team is spending countless hours hunting down your patient’s historical records and converting them to structured data, the Canvas + Zus integration may be a game changer. Clinicians can leverage the Zus Aggregated Profile (ZAP) to insert relevant patient data (historical medications, conditions, labs, and encounters sourced from various HIEs and proprietary data networks) directly into Canvas profiles in actionable ways. Learn more about our Partnership with Zus here .