What Is MEG’s Abbreviation Checker tool?
The Abbreviation Checker tool allows you to quickly check inputted abbreviations (from patient charts or clinical documents) against any list(s) of approved abbreviations previously uploaded to the system (via Excel).
MEG admins can upload and associate lists of approved abbreviations (e.g. local hospital policies, as well as regulator-approved Excel lists) to the tool in a matter of seconds. Note: Abbreviations are case sensitive.
How Do You Use It?
Once added to your MEG account and made available to you, the tool can be selected from the audit dropdown list appearing as “Abbreviation Checker”.
The single data entry box on-screen allows for a simple, efficient user experience: input each abbreviation as you find them during a Chart Audit and hit ‘Next’ to collect the ‘Observation’.
When you’ve finished, you can visit the preview screen for a snapshot of your average compliance results before submitting everything to the system:
The tool can be used on any mobile or desktop device - even when offline or in poor connectivity.
Why Use It?
Abbreviations in healthcare are commonplace across all sorts of medical documents: medical charts, discharge summaries, and medication orders. Study findings indicate it’s not uncommon for staff to have difficulty understanding the meaning behind some of the abbreviations used in their hospital.
To prevent such misunderstandings and the potential risk to patients, proactive hospitals establish lists of approved and/or ‘not to be used’ abbreviations - and monitor for appropriate usage.
Given that official ‘Approved Abbreviation’ lists can number over one thousand terms in length, manually cross-checking terms noted in medical documents against approved lists can be tedious, time-consuming and lead to inaccuracies in compliance reporting.
Use MEG’s Abbreviation Checker tool to expedite this process. Get a better understanding of your overall compliance rates, highlight the top ‘problem terms’ and track trends over time.
Configurable Reporting Dashboards
The tool will check each inputted abbreviation against any list of approved abbreviations (uploaded to the system via Excel) and give you an overall compliance score which can be filtered by date, location, user or team.
Track the most commonly used abbreviations in standard bar chart format and the top 15 most misused abbreviations:
The Pareto chart format allows for easy identification of the most significant issues. Hover over the bars to read the cumulative value (reading left to right) of the top misused abbreviations to understand their attribution to the overall compliance score.
Additional reporting widgets that can also be found in this dashboard include: ‘Number of Abbreviations Inputted’ bar chart, ‘Compliance Over Time’ run chart and the ‘Ward League Table’.
MEG’s Abbreviation Checker Tool is live and ready to use. Getting started is easy:
Sign up for a free trial below (or contact a Customer Support team member)
Supply an Approved Abbreviation List(s)
We’ll do the rest.