Epic PCP Attribution What is it and what part do you play?
The intention is to to ensure all patients have a valid PCP General assignment in Epic. The Attribution utility accomplishes this by determining who the most likely PCP is for a patient based on recent visits with primary care providers in the UNC Health Care System. o o
The utility is run monthly It generates a designation of “PCP-General ATTRIBUTED” in each patient record in the Epic Patient Care Team screen,
o o o
o o
If the new “Attributed” designation is the same as the old designation, no “Attributed” will display for that run cycle. ie. If Dr. Jones is Attributed from the last time, and he is still the Attributed provider currently, the utility will not redesignate him.
It looks for two or more visits to a primary care provider in the past 18 months. A provider with no specialty designation of Family Practice and/or Primary Care in their SER record will not be included in the utility. Therefore, should the system find these, the next applicable provider will be used regardless of the visit date being older. For those with an unassigned PCP General, the utility will automatically designate the PCP-General Attributed provider as the PCP-General. Exception: If there has been a practice level, manual change to a “blank” PCP General or “none”, it will not be overridden by the system utility and will remain as indicated. Long term care facility patients are excluded from this algorithm. The utility WILL NOT generate a change to a record if the record is open during the utility run. This is hard coded in the system and cannot be changed.
Once the utility is run, Practice Managers are notified via email. Tips: o
A process should be in place as to whether to change the PCP-General to the one listed in the Attributed field. This process should involve discussion with Providers prior to making any change.
o
Identify deceased patients and alert Cadence staff to update patient demographics.
o
Identify inactive providers. Submit a HEAT ticket to have the SER table updated.
o
For patients who have left the practice (moved out of the area or changed to a non UNC practice), they can be made hidden from future attribution runs if the PCP General name is removed from the Patient Care Team screen. On a date following the last date of the patient’s office visit, simply remove the PCP General’s name and save the update. This will effectively mark the patient record as inactive for attribution purposes. If the patient should appear for a future visit at UNC the patient record will become eligible for attribution.
Key Epic reports to use for monitoring your attribution assignments: o o
“My PCP-Attributed Patients Needing Review” and “My Department’s PCP Attributed Patients Needing Review”
The PCP Attribution DOES NOT affect the status of any quality measure metrics nor has any bearing on empanelment. If the practice chooses not to change the PCP General based on the Attributed, nothing is affected.
The “PCP Attributed” field should NOT be deleted from the Epic patient record even if not changing the designated provider as this field provides valuable information. If it is deleted, it will just repopulate with the next monthly run of the PCP Attribution utility.
Please contact the following individuals with questions concerning PCP Attribution. Thank you, Practice Quality & Innovation Team: PQI Analytics Manager (
[email protected]) PQI Business Analyst (
[email protected] PQI Clinical QA Specialist (Jeff.
[email protected])