How To Stop Avoiding To Do The Unfinished Patient Charts

Quite a few physicians shared with me that they have unfinished charts from previous days or even months. Some have twenty charts, some have fifty to more than one hundred charts to be finished. They all understand it is important to finish the patient charts. Besides being an important tool of communication among clinicians, patient documentation is also a proof of the services you rendered so that you can be compensated for the services you provided.

There seems to be a common theme – the longer you leave the patient charts unfinished, the more you want to avoid them. At times, you may even believe that by avoiding the charts, they will somehow disappear.

Ignoring your charts will not make them go away.

If someone else will do the charts for you, that is great. Otherwise, you are responsible for them. It is important for patient care. It is important for communication and for billing purposes. Yet you find yourself having different reasons to justify not doing those charts. Oh, you have to go to your child’s piano recital, or you need to clean up the house. You may even discover that you are more creative than you think when it comes to finding excuses.

Why are we avoiding to do what is important? The simple answer is, whatever the task is, be it doing patient charts or something else, that it is causing you discomfort. You may think it is too difficult for you to complete the task. You may even think it is impossible for you to do that. You believe there is no time to do it. You think that you cannot do it perfectly so instead, you are running away from it.

Realize that the longer you wait to do the patient charts, the more you make that a bigger monster than it is. If you want to do your charts perfectly, the longer you wait, the less you remember what happened during that patient encounter. A very important disclaimer here is that you do not have to write perfect notes.

The most challenging part is not to continue to do your patient notes. The most challenging part of all this is to start doing those notes you left behind. Start by preparing your mind. Why do you want to finish your patient notes? There are likely several reasons. Focus on one or two important reasons, so important that they will cause you to get started. Maybe it affects patient care. Maybe you are six months behind in reimbursements because you have not finished some charts every clinic day for the past six months. Or maybe you are tired of having unfinished charts haunt your days. Figure out what the compelling reasons for catching up on the unfinished charts from days ago. What is on the other side of finishing the charts?

Believe that you can do it. Use other physicians as examples. If they can do it, you can do it too. If you do not believe you can do something, you likely will not put in the effort to do it.

You have the compelling reason or reasons. You believe you can do it. It is time to start doing it. It feels uncomfortable to switch from avoiding the daunting task of charting to facing it head on. Set a date and time to finish those old charts. The goal is to eventually not have any incomplete charts.

Choose the very next small step to start doing your charts. For example, turning on the electronic health record system. Once you get started, keep at it. Be consistent. Be your own cheerleader. Sometimes it may help to have a friend to support you. An accountability partner may be helpful too.

Once you get started and generate a momentum, keep going. Be open to find ways to be more efficient. This will help minimize the number of unfinished charts in the future. Ideally, the goal is to finish all the patient charts in the same day. Then you will have any unfinished charts left behind.

When you find yourself avoiding to do a task that is important to do, ask yourself why. What kind of discomfort is generated when you think about the task? Train yourself to do the important things even though it is not comfortable. Remember why you are doing it. Imagine yourself already done with the task. What does it look like? How does it feel? Do the next small step to get yourself started. Be consistent with what you do. Cheer yourself on. Celebrate little milestones. Be open to find more efficient ways to do your patient charts. Eventually, you will catch up with all the unfinished charts and keep up with finishing the patient charts in the same day.