yehster wrote on Tuesday, July 24, 2012:
Even though we all understand that what Art hopes to implement for Mental Health is applicable to other scenarios everyone has a slightly different idea of what the term “Treatment Plan” really means. So I’d like to propose some vocabulary.
1. Action Item
An action item is something that needs to be done over the course of a patient’s treatment.
Examples from mental health might be:
a. Initial Mental Health Evaluation
b. Traditional Therapy Session: (lay on the couch and chat)
c. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
d. Group Therapy
Example for chronic conditions:
e. Hemoglobin A1C blood test/ BUN/Cr etc… (routine labs for Diabetes Management)
f. Diabetic Foot Exam
g. Diabetic Retina Exam
Examples for acute condition:
h: Wound check/suture removal
i: Any Clinical Reminders would also be action items.
Each action item would have it’s status tracked. (due in X time frame, completed on. Canceled, etc…) and possibly be linked to a problem/diagnosis
2.** Action List**
This would simply be a presentation of all action items for a given patient. It would be dynamically generated for a given patient, and
3. Action Plan(or maybe Action Set?)
This is a predefined grouping of Action Items that can be assigned to a given patient.
As an example, for Art’s group, maybe at referral time the “initial patient” action set which consists of “Initial Evaluation” and “Create Treatment Plan”. Would be assigned. But then over the course of creating the “Treatment Plan” additional action items (6 Counseling Sessions + 1 CBT session?) could be added as a package.
Action Plans for various conditions could be defined based on current clinical guidelines/best practices.
e.g. Action plan for poorly control Diabetes
a. Nutrition Counseling with dietician
b. Follow up in X weeks for detailed review of blood sugar log with PA
c. Follow up in X+Y weeks with Physician
Anyway if folks think this might be useful terminology I propose we try to start using it for these discussion. Like I said though, it seems pretty clear to me that “Treatment Plan” means something different to Art than it does to Sam, Jack and Brady.