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Pensieve

Procedure

Cross consultation

Walks through requesting an opinion from another clinician or service and following the request through to their response.

A cross consultation is a request for another clinician or service to give an opinion on a patient. You raise it like any other order and follow it through the same lifecycle until the response returns. This page walks through requesting the opinion and tracking it to a response.

The request lives on the patient's visit, routes to the service you name, and moves through the order lifecycle while you track it. The response returns onto the record as an attributed entry.

Before you start

A few things hold before you can raise the request.

Done.The patient has an open visit.
Done.A diagnosis is recorded on the visit.
Done.Your role and relationship to the patient allow the order.

Requesting an opinion

  1. 1

    Open the patient's record

    Find the patient and open the record in Atlas. Work from the open visit the consultation belongs to.

  2. 2

    Choose cross consultation

    Pick cross consultation from the catalogue, then name the service you want an opinion from. The request draws its detail from the catalogue.

  3. 3

    Set the urgency and add a note

    Mark the request routine or urgent, and write a note carrying the question you want answered. The urgency travels with the request to the consulting service.

  4. 4

    Place the request

    Place the request. It attaches to the visit and routes to the consulting service, ready on their worklist.

Following the request

Once placed, the request runs the ordinary order lifecycle. The sequence below shows one request end to end.

Figure 1.Diagram showing a request travelling from the requesting clinician to the consulting service, and a response returning to the record.
  1. 1

    Watch it move

    The request shows as an order in progress on the patient's active orders. You see its state change as the consulting service picks it up.

  2. 2

    Read the response

    The consulting clinician records their response against the request. It lands on the record as an attributed entry, held under the same access rules as the rest of the chart.

  3. 3

    See it complete

    The request reaches completed once the opinion is recorded. The whole exchange stays on the visit, ready to read again.

Changing a request

You can withdraw a request while it is open by cancelling it, and you can pause it by placing it on hold. Each move is recorded against the request, so the reason for a withdrawal stays with the order.

The response is attributed

The consulting clinician's response carries their name and the moment they recorded it, the same way every entry in the record does. So the opinion reads back plainly to anyone who opens the record.

Common questions

Is a cross consultation charged?

A cross consultation carries a charge where the catalogue item defines one, raised when you place the request. Where the item carries no charge, the request runs its lifecycle with none.

Where do I see the response?

On the patient's active orders while the request is open, and in the record once the opinion is recorded.

Can I ask more than one service at once?

Each request names one service. Raise a separate request for each service whose opinion you want.

See the whole path an order travels in the order lifecycle.