Continuous Care of Patients - one school's protocol

I was able to get a hold of my contact to understand her school's tracking system of continuous care patients. I will be interested to see what everyone finds out from their schools. See below for the feedback I received.

Our patients are tracked through several systems. The computer tracks completion of DH care and movement into the undergrad/grad dental clinics for continuing care. Each dental student has a clinic records coordinator(CRC). DH has a Patient appointment coordinator who functions the same way. This is part of the Quality Assurance (QA) process. The CRCs audit charts periodically for each of their assigned students for such issues as timeliness of care, faculty signatures on treatment plans andSOAP/progress notes, medical history updates, and radiology assessment byfaculty. In DH, we (as clinic coordinators) and our PAC, monitor these issues on the clinic floor and run computer queries to check for patient completion and recall information.If a patient is referred to a graduate clinic (endo, perio, oral surgery),it is up to the individual student to track the patient's process of care. Students are not always assigned the same patients for their next recall. Our DH PAC is responsible for appointing recall patients for DH, secondyear dental recall clinics and vertically-integrated group practice (D-2,D-3, & D-4 students). We are hoping that next year there will be DH-4students in the group practice settings.The QA process has benchmarks for patient care. The School QA committee has worked hard over the last 15-20 years to develop a protocol to ensure continuing quality service for each patient. Patient consent, HIPAA documentation, timeliness of care, completion of oral disease control therapies, and completion of Phase I and Phase II dental needs areintegral aspects of the process. We strive to surpass the benchmarks foreach of these areas. The CRCs report each semester on progress towards our benchmarks. QA committee members bring information back to their academic units to make changes in curriculum or clinic procedures to assist in improving patient care.