Pre-clinic preparation

The problem

Preparation is the first thing to go when the list is long. Its absence shows up as the appointment where you read the notes with the patient sitting in front of you.

The steps

1. Patient details and Patient record.
2. Sources, pointed at the protocol for the clinic you are running, so "what is due" means what your service says is due.
3. Calculate anything the review depends on that is arithmetic rather than judgement, so the number is right before you look at it rather than worked out in your head between patients. See Calculations you can rely on.
4. Ask Rhazes what is outstanding: results requested and not back, actions from the last visit not completed, monitoring now due under your protocol.
5. Document, using the Pre-Chart template.
6. Create tasks for anything that should be sorted before the appointment rather than during it, such as chasing a result you will otherwise be discussing blind.

Put it on a schedule

This is the clearest case for scheduling. Run it the evening before or early the same morning, so the preparation exists whether or not anyone had time to do it. Set the timezone to where you work, and check the next run time is what you expected. See Scheduling a workflow.

What to check

Treat the output as a prompt, not a briefing you can rely on unread. It tells you what to look at. You still look.

Where it says nothing is outstanding, that means nothing was found in what it could see, which is not the same as nothing existing.