Kirtan Patel, MD, and Alicia McCarthy, MD, set out to solve an age-old problem that KP clinicians experience every day: How to quickly access a wealth of up-to-date, evidence-based clinical information from myriad sources, including e-consult pages, patient information documents, KP Clinical Library guidelines, and My Doctor Online.
“When a clinician is caring for a patient with a certain diagnosis or symptom, they need to sift through all these different resources to find the best guidance,” says Dr. McCarthy, Maternal-Fetal Medicine physician at KP Walnut Creek.
Drs. Patel and McCarthy came up with a simple, elegant solution to this complex problem: Super SmartPhrases. SmartPhrases, also known as dot-phrases, are shortcuts in KP Health Connect that allow users to type a period followed by a short phrase to insert longer text into a patient chart. Super SmartPhrases give clinicians a quick way to share an entire course of care with colleagues or patients in just a few keystrokes.
“A great example is flu season sinusitis. Why aren’t antibiotics needed? How do you do a sinus rinse? What over-the-counter medications can you use?,” says Dr. Patel, Internal Medicine physician at KP Livermore.
“The Super SmartPhrase allows clinicians to send the patient all of our resources in one place, equipping them with a clear understanding of their treatment plan and meaningful guidance. What used to take minutes now takes seconds.”
Dr. McCarthy focuses on Super SmartPhrases for consultations and clinician-facing management guidance, while Dr. Patel develops them for easy insertion into patient-facing emails. Together they have created a library of more than 600 Super SmartPhrases that are used by clinicians across KP Northern California. Both coordinate with local and regional work groups to continually review and update existing phrases and create new ones.
“I used a Super SmartPhrase and saw the patient on her return visit. She told me it was life changing to receive all of that information to help with her symptoms,” Dr. McCarthy says. “And my colleagues share all the time how valuable these SmartPhrase tools are to their practice.”