Epic Tips
Have you ever wondered how to create your own patient lists in EPIC or how to more efficiently determine when patients on your lists have new results to review? Dr. Josh Meskin put together a wonderful document that details how you can do these things. Using these tips can drastically improve one’s efficiency in several ways, including being able to change the column widths for your patient list (making a print out much more user friendly.) One caveat about the latter – if one intends to use his/her own list for printing a handover document, s/he must be sure to include all the same columns as the System Lists.
Creating and Using Patient Lists
1. Define different Lists
a. System Lists
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This is the list that is created by the system. It will list all of the patients in your unit. You can tell a system list by the 2 people (blue and red) by the name of the list. With a system list, patients are automatically added when they are admitted to the hospital and they are automatically deleted after being discharged.
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Click on the + sign next to System Lists
b. My Patient List
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Creating a personal list helps you to find your patients faster and they will stay on your list until you manually delete them. Also, the list is customizable.
2. Create a personal list
a. Click the folder called My Patient List
b. Click Create on the Tool Bar
c. Type a name for your list
d. Under Layout choose from the Available Columns the items that you want to see on your list (If you do not select at least one column your list will be blank)
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Add a column to your list by clicking the name and then click Add button
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Minimum suggested columns are:
1. Patient name
2. mrn
3. Unit
4. Room
5. New rslt
e. Order of the selected columns can be switched using the up and down arrows on the far right
f. List can be shared with others by clicking on the Advanced tab at the top
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Click in the empty box under user
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Click the magnify glass icon to search for a user
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Click on the user and click accept
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Click on the access level box and then the magnify glass icon to define level of access and then click accept
g. Click Accept
h. Columns and users can be edited by right-clicking on the title of the list and selecting Properties
3. Adding patients to a personal list
a. Using the system list
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Click the + sign next to System Lists
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Click the + sign next to FH Units
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Click the desired unit
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Find the desired patient
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Click and hold on the patient and then drag to your list under My Patient List
1. Release mouse button when + sign appears while hovering over list name
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One can also add an entire team from the System Lists by dragging the Team to their list.
b. Manually
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Highlight list name under My Patient List
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Click Add Patient icon on toolbar near top of screen
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Type patient name
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Click Accept
4. Removing Patients from My
a. Using My List
i. Right click the patient name and select Remove
ii. Highlight the patient name and click the Remove button on toolbar
b. Using the Remove Button patient’s name in the My List tree
i. Right click patient’s name in the My List tree and click the Remove button
5. Designating a Default List (saves and opens to this list – instead of scrolling thru lists)
a. Right Click List
b. Choose Default List
c. Notice Asterisk by List
New Results Tool
Allows for active monitoring of results (labs, radiology results, pathology, microbiology, etc.)
Easier than continually opening patient chart to see if test results has become available
Allows for quick review of new information without sorting through previously seen tests
Alters user of result from “older” test that may take days before finalized, such as blood culture
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Create a list (see attached instructions)
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While viewing a list under My Patient Lists double click on the New rslt column for the desired patient (in this case on the 3 s)
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All results that have not been previously seen will appear in bold
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Review results
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If comparison to previous reviewed results is desired, right click and select extended view
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Click Time Mark icon on toolbar to mark all current results as reviewed
a. New values will no longer be bold
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When returning patient list screen New Reslt column will now be blank
8. New Reslt column will display a new time when an unseen test becomes available
