Surgical Pathways Facilitates Surgical Process

By: Yvonne Moore

Cullman-based Systemedx, a provider of EHR and Practice Management software, has developed a surgical solutions program called Surgical Pathways. The program allows surgeons to track each step of the surgery process, starting as soon as the surgery is requested. Surgeons and staff can check pre- certification benefits, forms, medical clearance, medications, labs, equipment, text messages, surveys, and billing. They can always see which step the surgery process is on and who is responsible for completing the task. The Surgical Pathways worksheet allows the administrator to quickly view all surgeries and their current progress with user/date- time stamps for all task, notes and status changes. And Surgical Pathways can work with a practice’s existing EHR-Electronic Health Record/Practice Management system.

Because there are usually several people involved in the surgical billing process, miscommunications can occur, resulting in incorrect billing. Often, one person may spend an entire day trying to get OP notes pulled together for surgical coders.

Surgical Pathways solves these problems with built-in features that allow providers to engage with patients during the entire process of surgery. It can send patients a reminder to stop taking certain medications. It will confirm the appointment and link to a map of the surgery location. After the surgery, the program can conduct a patient satisfaction survey via text, email, or voicemail.

The program helps the clinical staff with medical clearance; cardiac clearance; the hospital surgery form; hospital H&P; and pain medications. It helps doctors keep track of details of the surgery; the surgery OP notes. With the Surgical Pathways worksheet, the billing staff is able to get OP notes; get the hospital face sheet; and code the surgery the way it was performed at the hospital.

Systemedx can also provide faxing and emailing documents using the software, if the provider needs to track all the steps of the procedure and assign each related task to the correct staff member. On top of that, the program has an overall dashboard so the providers can see the current progress of each step. Surgical Pathway allows you to track everything that takes place before, during and after surgery, including but not limited to pre-cert, forms, medical clearance, medications, labs, equipment, text messages, surveys and billing.

Yvonne Moore is in charge of Healthcare Market Development for Systemedx.

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