Family physicians are often tasked with ensuring patients have the durable medical equipment (DME) they need for a given ailment. This includes nebulizers, rolling walkers, crutches, wheelchairs, and hospital beds. Family physicians are expected to be familiar with the DME indications and ordering procedures in order to obtain these items for their patients. For many of our family medicine residents, this is a vast and overwhelming facet of primary care that is often dreaded due to lack of knowledge concerning medical indications and processes of ordering DME. Therefore, our project at ETSU Family Medicine Residency of Bristol aimed to improve our residents comfort with and understanding of the clinic’s protocol surrounding the ordering of DME. We started with an evaluation of our residents’ knowledge and comfort with the indications, ordering protocol, and documentation requirements of durable medical equipment. We then conducted an educational didactic on the information needed to be able to document and order DME in our clinic. Additionally, we provided our physicians with “dot phrase macros” for proper documentation required when ordering DME through insurance. After the presentation, we re-assessed the resident’s knowledge and comfort with understanding and ordering DME in our clinic. We found that overall there was an improvement in the residents’ comfort and understanding of the DME ordering processes as well as an improvement in their knowledge of DME ordering requirements. As a result of these findings, we plan to continue DME education for all future residents at ETSU Family Medicine Residency of Bristol.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ETSU/oai:dc.etsu.edu:asrf-2045 |
| Date | 25 April 2023 |
| Creators | Hall, Luke, Rhinehardt, Jared, White, Elizabeth, Melkonian, Alexander |
| Publisher | Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University |
| Source Sets | East Tennessee State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Appalachian Student Research Forum |
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