NEW FEATURES: PSI & Owner Location
Feature Discussions
The Mid-2021 update to SpecVet included some useful features that can help manage many emergency departments, the Patient Severity Index, and the Owner Location. We hope that these new features will help you become more efficient in the care of your patients.
Patient Severity Index - PSI
Patient Severity Index - PSI
Patient Severity Index - PSI
This feature is a way for clinics to “rate” each visit to identify, and then summarize the criticality of all visits within a clinic. While clinics can determine their own way to assess the PSI, and determine their own usefulness, the below details can be used as a suggestion:
Patients of all levels of illness and injury require care and our teams must help them in order of need. The PSI Levels below shows how we make those decisions.
LEVEL 1 - Resuscitation
Patient Appearance: Non-responsive, difficulty breathing, major bleeding possible
Examples: Serious physical trauma, heart-related issues, cannot breathe
Action: Immediate attention by the doctor seen before all other patients
LEVEL 2 - Emergent
Patient Appearance: Much less responsive than normal, trouble breathing, ate something toxic
Examples: Physical injury, venomous snake bite, heat stroke
Action: Doctor must be made aware, and patient seen ASAP time sensitive
LEVEL 3 - Urgent
Patient Appearance: Less responsive than normal, known, or obvious injury
Examples: Serious cuts, trouble walking, vomiting, not eating + weight loss, difficulty urinating
Action: Doctor made aware, and patient will be seen after level 1 or 2 patients
LEVEL 4 - Non-urgent
Patient Appearance: Mostly normal behavior yet known to have had something occur
Examples: Small cuts, mild injury, low appetite for prolonged period
Action: Doctor made aware, and patient will be seen after level 1,2, and 3 patients
LEVEL 5 - Stable
Patient Appearance - normal behavior, no or minor visible evidence of illness or injury
Examples: Soft stool, low appetite, not feeling right
Action: Patient should see family veterinarian if possible, will be seen last in the ER
We often find that posting the above levels along with the following paragraph of text in your lobby areas can help inform your clients and provide some explanation as to why there might be long wait times.
Veterinary Emergency Rooms work just like their human counterparts. Patients of all levels of illness and injury require care and our teams must help them in order of need. The scale above shows how we make those decisions. Being patient and kind with our teams will help them help your beloved family member.
Within SpecVet, the PSI is indicated by a colored circle on the Dashboard, as well as within the visit demographic screens. Furthermore, below the Visit Dashboard, is a summary of the count (the number of visits) based upon your filter criteriathat fit within each PSI Level. This is a quick way for staff to assess the current “load” or criticality of all visits to help provide clients with anticipated wait times or manage diversions. The PSI Level can be edited from within the Visit Info page, after clicking on the PSI Circle.
In order to REMOVE, or CLEAR a PSI level, from the Edit Visit Info screen, just SHIFT-CLICK on the number.
The “Location” of your patient’s owners can now be managed within SpecVet. The owner location is a small, “plain text” field where you can input the location of the owner. Whether it be a parking stall (P5, P13, etc), or other locations (Lobby, Room 5, Home, etc.). There is no pre-selected list for this location. It is editable in the same edit window where you set the Visit Status and Patient location. However, the history of the owner location is NOT logged as are changes to the patient location and visit status.
You can see the owner location displayed on the dashboard under the patient location as well as the main visit demographic area, where we added a “P” and an “O” to represent locations for Patient & Owner.
