Wiki IntraOp Patient Death

[pmorton36]

Hello there. I am reaching out to see how you handle documentation for an intraop death that is not related to anesthesia? We have a new documentation system that requires handoff, attestation of emergence, etc. and none of it technically applies postoperatively to a intraop death. It would be so nice to hear how others are capturing information that is required for billing and appropriate documentation.

Thank you very much for any help you are willing to part with! Happy Holidays.

 

[pscanlan]

I'm not quite sure what you're asking. If you're asking how to document an intraoperative death in your specific software (because it won't let you finish the case without documented handoff or whatever), you'd probably have better success contacting the software vendor, or their support staff. Or you could name the software you use and if anyone here uses it they could perhaps help. I'd go with the first option, if I had this problem.

In general, when one of my providers has a deceased patient, we use the time of death as the "handoff" point as that is when anesthesia care ended. The documentation aspect (sign offs etc) at the facility is beyond my purview, so I guess I'm not much help with that part.