High-Risk Waivers are a common part of the natural flow of an HVSN clinic. With hundreds of surgeries happening a week, you will inevitably receive a patient with an increased anesthetic and surgical risk. A high-risk waiver is a way to provide the owner with informed consent for higher-risk surgeries.
The HRW Queue in Patient Flow will only display animals that were flagged as needing a waiver during the appointment exam. The waiver can only be sent to clients once an animal is checked in on the visit date and an exam is performed marking the concern and need for a waiver. The waiver cannot be sent to clients prior to the appointment day.
Types of high-risk waivers: Verbal and Email
First, it should be noted to use these tools, your clinic must be using Patient Flow. These tools are only available in Patient Flow.
In HQ, we have automated the process of collecting high-risk waivers. We offer workflows to offer the high-risk waiver to the owner and have them accept it or decline it. The two workflows include verbal and email. The ASPCA spay neuter alliance does a high-risk verbal waiver with owners. Your clinic may want to follow this model, or you may want to do a variation of it which is a high-risk verbal waiver with the witness present.
- From Patient Flow, examine the premed screen, exam column> and click the normal button. This is the path to all things related to the exam of an animal.
- From the exam screen, request the high-risk waiver button.
- Next, click the reasons for the high-risk waiver, and click the Done button at the bottom of the screen.
*Note: Your clinic sets up high-Risk Waiver reasons in Settings> Medical Notes. The descriptions are customizable. See the instructions here for setting them up.
Reasons for High Risk Waiver
- Once the request high-risk waiver button has been clicked, the patient is put on the HRW button in Patient Flow. So that you know, you’ll note it inserts the reasons on the left.
HRW in Patient Flow
- You can select the Verbal button as the option on the right.
- Next, you’ll notice a script pops up for you to read to the client. The script is editable in Settings. You can also indicate in Settings if you would like to require a Witness Name to be input. The staff members’ names will already be input based on their login. In this example, two reasons have been indicated for the High-Risk Waiver. The blurb of text that goes with it is set up in Settings.
Cancel a High Risk Waiver
If a waiver was accidentally created, use the Action button in PF or update the exam. From either, you will see the option to cancel the waiver.
