16 Ways to Improve Your Medical Documentation

Thanks to the American College of Osteopathic Emergency Physicians for inviting me to speak on how to improve medical documentation at their 2020 Virtual Spring Seminar.

Looking for ideas to help improve your medical documentation? Here are 16 of them:

1. They’re called vital signs for a reason
2. Answer the question
3. A history is worth a thousand words
4. Respect the template
5. Make depth of charting equal depth of billing
6. Don’t chart what you didn’t do
7. I’ll take re-examinations for $1000, Alex
8. WCGW?
9. The Difficult Patient
10. Outside influences
11. Algorithms make you look smart
12. Y’all come back now, ya hear?
13. Road testing
14. Jibe talking
15. Shift change
16. Now begone, before somebody drops a house on you, too!

Handouts for the lecture can be downloaded at this link.

Looking for sample emergency department charting templates? Click here. Feel free to add suggestions in the comments section.