High quality clinical coding is an essential feature of modern healthcare, particularly with the increase in sharing electronic clinical records between organisations. With highly complex coding systems (SNOMED) and offering multiple clinical codes that appear to mean the same thing, it is easy for practice staff to use incorrect clinical codes when recording data.
Ardens constantly monitors all clinical data as it is typed in EMIS Web and will alert users to coding errors with a clear and simple message explaining what the coding error is and how to fix it. We understand that pop-up alerts can be a distraction and we have taken care to only use them where there is an important coding error.
The Ardens Data Quality Alerts are installed 'active' when deployed to your EMIS system. To view a list of the Data Quality Alerts available, click here.
Please see an example below of an Ardens Data Quality Alert:
The following staff member is entering a cancer code. The particular code they have select is a 'morphology' code, this is not a recognised code for QOF.
This will prompt the following data quality alert to display:
Highlighting that the code selected is incorrect for QOF, along with a suggestion of the code term to use.
Once you click on OK, replace the code if necessary.
The Ardens Data Quality Alerts will appear as display text prompts (as shown above) or in some scenarios, in the pink alert box i.e. a prompt to remind staff the patient needs to be weighed if on the Obesity register.
Deactivating the Data Quality Alerts
We strongly recommend that the Ardens Data Quality Alerts are left active, to
ensure coding issues and missing requirements are corrected in real-time. However, the alerts can be deactivated at practice level should the practice feel the alert duplicates something they already have in place.
To deactivate an alert, access the EMIS bubble > Configuration, here you will have an option for Template Manager or Resource Publisher (if neither, you do not have the correct access for this), select either option.
If you have accessed Template Manager, click on the Ardens folder located within the Templates & Protocols tab.
If you are a Resource Publisher site, within the Protocols & templates tab, click on the Shared folders, followed by the Ardens LIVE toolset folder.
Once you have located the Ardens folder, click on the QOF Protocols folder.
Locate the relevant alert, right click on the alert, select Status > Deactivate.
Please note - once deactivated, this will be deactivated for all staff.
Further Learning - why not access the Ardens Academy and enrol on the Getting Started with Ardens EMIS > Alerts module to fully utilise these resources.
If you require any further assistance on the process above, please contact Ardens support on: [email protected]