Physical Therapy Complex Documentation Made Easier – Part 2
The Problem – Within sections of a physical therapy note there are often many types of information that may need to be entered. Previously, navigating these has been slow and clumsy. The Solution – Use thoughtful design to display subsection navigation and develop a search tool that allows the therapist to filter to options to only what is needed. |
Creating Medicare compliant documentation can be an incredibly involved process. At times, there are hundreds of options for what data might be entered. We did not want slow speeds or complicated design to impede or impair a therapist’s ability to generate good notes.
Within top-level sections, there are subsections and various areas for entering data. Inside sections for a Subjective, Objective, Assessment, Plan and other compliance and billing related section, there are often multiple sub sections. Navigating these has been difficult in the past because of poor visual design and the sheer number of options. Many areas have been shoe-horned in over the years, in order to keep the classic SOAP format.
When figuring out how we want to build this, we had to make sure these are laid out in a manner which is easy to follow along with. In areas like Functional Outcome measures, in addition to well spaced out, clickable and touchable buttons, and there’s a search tool to narrow down your options.
Once the users are in an upper level section of the documentation suite, they will be presented with a horizontal navigation bar to display and transfer them to the various subsections. This is a familiar, straightforward approach. Â When a section has many subsections or options, there’s also a search bar that appears and updates which sections are view-able as the user types.
bestPT Documentation Design:
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