Engaging support staff to redesign and improve the process to communicate with outside physicians.

280Background: Communicating with a patient’s primary care physician and other specialists is a key component of collaborative patient care across organizations. This includes identifying and maintaining a current list of care team members and distributing consult and progress notes. Recently, after transitioning to a new EMR, referring physicians noted a reduction in notes about their patients seen at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The process in the new EMR was more burdensome than the automated system in the legacy application: physicians were now required to populate a recipient list, manually attach a note, and arrange for mailing of a printed letter if no fax number was available in the directory. The system did not require notes to be sent, and consequently many physicians chose not to adopt this new administrative work. Methods: A multidisciplinary team was formed to reduce the administrative burden of sending notes from providers and to enhance communication with outside physicians. All adult ...