How to Document Work Status

If you have not already done so, please read Check-Out Patients Overview.

Summary

The Work Status field is used to identify whether the employee may return to full duty or not. The field is displayed on a number of different reports, such as the Work Status Summary, but it is not used as a variable to sort reports, such as reporting all employees on modified duty. (The modified duty reports are driven instead by the lost and modified duty time fields.)

For your convenience, the Work Status field is displayed in a number of places throughout the software. Regardless of where you enter the information, however, it will be displayed identically in all the places that the Work Status is displayed with the exception of the Incident record. When the WORK status fields (Work Status, As of Date, From Date, Thru Date) are altered via any of the Visit Entry forms, the software will update those same fields on the Incident record ONLY when the As of Date on the Visit record is the same date or later date on the Incident record.

If your clinic uses Net Health Employee Health and Occupational Medicine Provider Charting then work restrictions will probably be entered by the provider on the WORK STATUS tab of the charting workspace.
Steps to Document Work Status

You will usually document the Work Status on the medical tab on either the [Enter Visit] window or the [Enter Injury] window. In either location, take these steps:

  1. Click the down arrow to the right of the Work Status field, and select the Work Status.

    Alternatively, you can just press the following letters on your keyboard, instead of pressing the drop down arrow and selecting the choice:

    1. Press R once to select Rel Full Duty. (Work Status report will include the phrase, "Return to work without restrictions")

    2. Press R again for Rel Mod Duty "Work Status report will include the phrase, "Return to work without restrictions"

    3. Press T for Temporarily Off Work

    4. Press P for Permanently Disabled.

    5. Press D for Discharged.

If you select Permanently Disabled or Discharged, the program will automatically enter today's date for Case Closed date.

  1. Check the As Of Date, to ensure it is correct. If not, type over the entry in the field. Press the TAB key.

  2. If the physician has asked for the patient to return, click the Follow-Up Appointment button and schedule the visit.

  3. Technically speaking, discharged from care is not a work status. The Work Status Report prints the Work Status and the As of Date.

The"Discharge From Care" date appears on this report as a result of entering the date in one of two places as demonstrated below:

Enter_Patient_Visit

If a Discharge Date is entered on the Visits/ MEDICAL tab, an additional phrase will print on the Work Status Report that says "Discharged From Care" along with the Discharge Date.

EMR_Charting_Workspace

Also, in the EMR Charting Workspace/WORK STATUS tab is a field to give the provider the ability to enter a Discharge Date along with the Work Status. Entry of this date during charting will automatically update the Discharge Date field in the visit.

To preview this feature using the EMR Charting Workspace:

1. From the Patient Visit window, select EMR Charting on the right of the window.

2. The EMR Charting Workspace displays.

3. Select the Work Status tab.

4. Within this tab enter the Discharged From Care date.

5. When the Work Status report is selected, it will display with the Discharged From Care under the Work Status section.

  1. Discharge Date is automatically populated if Work Status is Discharged. It can be overwritten.
  2. MMI Date is automatically populated if Work Status is Perm Disability. It can be overwritten.
  3. Enter the Case Closed date, if appropriate. (If you entered a Work Status of "Discharged" or "Perm Disability" the Case Closed field will be filled automatically with today's date.) When this field has been entered, the incident/case will be treated as closed on reports.
  4. If the patient has been released for modify duty, enter work restrictions.

Work Status History

As part of the Workers' Comp Activity Report, the physician may need to enter more than one Work Status on a Visit. For example: The employee is seen on a Monday and the physician says that the employee can return to work with modified duty for this week and then return to full-time the following week. The next appointment with the physician is in 2 weeks. Net Health Employee Health and Occupational Medicine is able to enter multiple Work Statuses and then associate that work status to the visit on various reports. In this case, the single visit will need to be tied to those Work Statuses. Therefore, when printing the Workers' Comp Activity Report or the Work Status Report, the Work Statuses can be visually associated with the visit.

Incident Entry window- MEDICAL tab

Enter_Injury

The Work Status label Status of has been changed to As Of.

The Work Status From Date has been added.

The Work Status Thru Date has been added.

A Work Status List box has been added. It displays all work status entries attached to this incident. They are displayed in the order that they were entered.

The checkboxes on the MEDICAL tab have been removed and are now on the PROBLEM tab.

The Case Number and the Carrier Claim Number have been removed from the MEDICAL tab.

Enter_Injury

The checkboxes from the bottom of the MEDICAL tab have been moved to the PROBLEM tab.

EMR Charting Workspace - WORK STATUS tab:

EMR_Charting_Workspace

- The Work Status From Date has been added. This may not be empty; it can be a future date.

- The Work Status Thru Date has been added. This may be empty; if populated, it cannot be earlier than Work Status From Date. This can be a future date.

EMR Chart Visit - MEDICAL tab

Enter_Patient_Visit

- The field Work Status has been added. It is a dropdown menu with the following selections:

 

- The Work Status As Of date has been added.

- The Work Status From Date has been added.

- The Work Status Thru Date has been added.

- A Work Status list box has been added. It displays all work status entries attached to this incident. They are displayed in the order that they were entered. Users may Add, Change, Delete entries.

- Click Add to enter a new record.

- Highlight a record and click Change to change the highlighted record.

- The following window will display for both Add and Change.

Enter_Assigned_Work_Status

Highlight a record and click Delete to delete the highlighted record. The user will be prompted with a message to make you sure they want to Delete this record. They will be forced to respond Yes before deleting the record from the table.

The current Work Status will be loaded when first going into the window. When saving the Visit, the system will compare the Work Status recorded on the Visit to what is in the history. If a record already exists that matches this data, the system will not save the record; otherwise the system will save the data.

The History button loads a new window that has a list box with all Work Status History attached to the Incident. That list box contains Work Status, As of Date, From Date, Thru Date, and Visit Date. Users may only view from the History window. Please note: when a Visit does not have an Incident attached to it, the History button will not be available.

Employee Health Enter Visit - MEDICAL tab

Enter_Patient_Visit

Non-Employee Health Enter Visit - MEDICAL tab

Enter_Visit

Report Examples:

The Work Status Summary Report supports the printing of ICD-9 and/or ICD-10's so that the recipient of the report may see all of the data recorded during charting. The different code sets for ICD-10 and ICD-9 will be printed separately and labeled appropriately.

Net Health Employee Health and Occupational Medicine will print all ICD-9 and ICD-10 codes that were coded as part of the Visit on the Work Status Summary Report, if the user selects the option to "Include Diagnosis" (on the Select Visit Report window).

- If both ICD-9 and ICD-10 codes are on a Visit, Net Health Employee Health and Occupational Medicine will print the ICD-10 codes prior to the ICD-9 codes.

- All ICD-10 codes are grouped together.

- All ICD-9 codes are grouped together.

- On the first line that an ICD-10 code prints, Net Health Employee Health and Occupational Medicine will print a label "ICD-10". All diagnosis codes for this label follow and are indented to indicate they belong to this group.

- On the first line that an ICD-9 code prints, Net Health Employee Health and Occupational Medicine will print a label "ICD-9". All diagnosis codes for this label follow and are indented to indicate they belong to this group.

- For both ICD-9 and ICD-10, Net Health Employee Health and Occupational Medicine will print the diagnosis codes in the order entered by the user.