Leveraging an electronic health record note template to standardize screening and testing for COVID-19

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic challenged health care organizations to develop ways to provide patient care with rapidly changing guidelines and scarce resources. Clinical leaders and informatics specialists partnered to rapidly develop an electronic health record (EHR) template for primary care staff to screen Veterans at Veterans Affairs (VA) Puget Sound. The template prompts categorization of patients by stability and suspicion for COVID-19, and provides just-in-time triaging advice for clinic staff. Each category is a discrete data element and this information was used by leadership to track screening and testing volumes. We found that a brief, practical EHR note template can be quickly adopted to inform guideline-based screening, direct patient care, and conserve resources.