Activate a Guideline

You can activate a care guideline for a patient on the Activate Care Guidelines template.

1. Open NextGen® Enterprise EHR.
2. Select the Care Guidelines link on any of the main template.
   The Care Guidelines template opens.
3. Select Add/Update in the Care Guidelines panel.
   The Activate Care Guidelines template opens.

   

4. Select Condition in the Active Guidelines panel.
   A list of all pre-configured care guidelines opens.

   

5. Select the condition in the list, and select OK.
   1. If you select Health Maintenance, the gender-specific Risk template opens.
      

   2. Select all risk factors for the patient and corresponding diagnoses, and then select Save & Close.
   3. If the patient does not have any risk indicators, select the No risk indicators check box.
      Note: Health maintenance is the only guideline that does not require you to associate a diagnosis with it.
6. The Diagnosis field is used to associate a diagnosis with an ICD code (used for billing) to the guideline. If you select any guideline other than health maintenance, you must select a diagnosis with an ICD code to associate with it.
   1. Select Diagnosis.
      The diagnosis search window opens.
   2. In the left side pane, select the appropriate list of diagnoses to search for a diagnosis.
   3. To search for a diagnosis not listed, enter the text in the Search field, and then select Search.
      The right pane displays diagnoses corresponding to the selected search list.

      Note: For an established patient, you are able to select the diagnosis from the patient's problems list or history of diagnoses. For a new patient, you must perform a diagnosis lookup.
   4. Select the diagnosis in the right side.
      

      Note: If you associate a diagnosis with a guideline that you want to activate for a patient, it does not assign that diagnosis to the patient. It gives you the required associated billing ICD code for the order, but not for the encounter.
      The Code field automatically displays the ICD code corresponding to the diagnosis selected.

      

7. Select Add.
   The guideline is now activated and items that are associated with it appear in the Active Guidelines panel grid.

   • The Due column displays the current encounter date for each item that is due.
   • The Status column displays due for those items that should be addressed and have a specific time interval, such as lab tests.
   • Items that do not display anything in the Status column do not need to be addressed at every encounter, they do not have a specific time interval.

   Note: For a medication guideline, the application checks to see if there are any prescribed medications for the guideline. If prescribed medications are present, the Status is set to prescribed, and if not, the Status is set to not prescribed.

   

8. Select Save & Close.