Collaboration saves time.

Caring for patients today is very complicated and involves many clinical and administrative tasks. Clinicians are often asked to fill out a wide variety of forms, including forms that verify that the patient's clinical status is stable. Currently, these forms are filled out manually by the clinician or staff. Clinicians use electronic medical records (EMRs) have the potential for significant time savings if the EMR can be used to eliminate manually loading data already housed in the EMR. This article describes how collaboration between a government agency and a medical group that uses the Epic EMR resulted in an electronic version of a commonly used form. Once implemented, this form resulted in a significant time savings for the clinician. It is hoped that this project will serve as a template for future similar projects that could result in more efficient use of clinician and office staff's time.