How Electronic Content Management is More than Just Document Tracking
In many ways, you can think of FrameworkLTC as being on the front lines of the order life cycle in any pharmacy that strictly services long-term care and post-acute care clients. As prescription requests come in and make their way through the various steps of fulfillment, every member of the pharmacy's staff must be able to maintain visibility of each order from phase to phase.
If at some point along this path there ends up being trouble — be it with one prescription or several — your odds of resolving the situation are greater when technicians, administrators and pharmacists are all capable of locating a problematic order and correcting it. FrameworkECM allows you to easily manage this responsibility: The platform's document and electronic content management tools are designed with the hectic workflow of an LTC pharmacy in mind, optimized to emphasize accuracy and efficiency at all times.
For this post, we'll be taking a closer look at certain specific pharmacy document-tracking processes as examples of just how valuable the FrameworkECM pharmacy solution can be.
Better management of Refill Too Soon (RTS) orders
Every LTC, retail or community pharmacy inevitably deals with a significant number of RTS prescription requests. These Rx orders first show up in the system as normal but are almost immediately flagged as being premature, either due to a physician's established dosage schedule or requirements of the insurance company. In individual situations, RTS orders aren't that big a deal, but if they're coming through frequently, in large batches or both, resolving them can quickly turn into a major time-suck — and a roadblock preventing the most timely delivery of patients' vital medications.
FrameworkECM helps mitigate this potential problem through an efficient and effective workflow process: The software detects electronic RTS prescription orders and automatically reroutes them to a specific folder. Then, FrameworkECM updates the grid information with the order's proper due date, notes that an error occurred, and can then hold the Rx order document until the correct date, resubmitting it to FrameworkLTC when necessary. The nursing station can also receive an automated fax from FrameworkECM with all necessary information regarding the initial RTS and the course of action initiated to correct it.
It's easy to set up the folder workflows to guarantee that this mitigation process for RTS orders goes off without a hitch every time. Once you've created a dedicated folder for RTS documents and determined where messages are coming from, open Customize from the main menu and then select Folder Workflows. (If you have trouble configuring the specifics of the workflow, don't be afraid to dip into the Help Center for assistance!)
Run single-use workflows for specialized documents
In some situations, you may need to urgently process a document that has been waiting on a response after a given period of time, needs to have a second set of eyes for review, or other errors. FrameworkECM allows you to set up that automated workflow in advance. It functions as a safety net: Ideally, the documents do not need any additional clarification or eyes on them and can easily move onto the next step, but if an action needs to occur, you're covered.
This feature is also easily accessed in the Workflow Properties section of Folder Workflow, which has an option called Trigger: After Arrival in Folder. While the process is fairly straightforward, it's worth noting that the automated action will trigger based on how long a document has been in a folder, not how long it's been in FrameworkECM overall (although there’s a way to do that, too!). Additionally, you may need to establish multiple workflows with the same trigger to make sure certain processes (e.g., escalating increasingly urgent messages) work as they should.
Document rerouting and management to avoid complications
From time to time, documents can end up misplaced: Some might fail to end up in the FrameworkECM archive, while others for some reason don't inbound into the directory as they should. As we noted earlier, things like this aren't major problems in isolation, but if they're happening frequently, it could gum up your pharmacy workflows and cause problematic prescription-delivery delays. Luckily, FrameworkECM is designed to help troubleshoot remedy such complications.
If documents are failing to inbound, they will be rerouted to the FrameworkECM error directory. Once you restart the inbounding process, you should be able to inbound the missing docs, particularly if a temporary server or network issue that caused the problem has gone back to normal. But remember: You'll have to change the doc names back to their original, from before they were inbounded.
You can also easily troubleshoot any issues that arise with document archiving in FrameworkECM. First, make sure that archiving is enabled in the System Folder section of the Customize main-menu option. Then, check if the Workflow Host Service is running. These settings can commonly end up being turned off by accident, but it's just as easy to turn them back on. For archiving errors that aren't quite that simple (such as a conflicting notification), a look through FrameworkECM's error logs should find the particulars of the mistake. Rectify the issue in the main notification settings and restart services to get everything back on track.
Examples like these are, of course, just a sampling of FrameworkECM's capabilities. Get in touch with us today — either to learn more about the platform or request a demo!