Patient Identification & Consent for Cerbo

Know who is on the line

Before a practice acts on a call about a patient, it needs reasonable confidence it is dealing with the patient or with someone the patient has authorized. In a cash-based or membership practice there may be no insurance card to lean on, so identification comes down to what the caller can tell you.

Your practice chooses the identifiers Katie asks for. Full name and date of birth are the usual pair; some practices add a home address or the email the patient registered with.

Katie collects, staff confirm

Katie asks for the identifiers and records them exactly as given. Your staff use them to find the patient in Cerbo, and MedReception Autopilot files the summary to that patient's chart from the staff member's own signed-in browser. If the details do not match a chart cleanly, staff should resolve it before anything is filed.

Because Katie does not read clinical information out to callers, the identity step mostly protects something else: it makes sure the right call lands on the right chart, and that staff know who they are calling back. Two patients can share a name, and families often share a surname and address, which is why the confirming step belongs with staff who can see the chart.

Family members and caregivers

Many calls come from someone other than the patient. In every case Katie records who is calling and the relationship they state. Whether staff may then discuss details with that person depends on the authorizations your practice holds, which staff check in Cerbo. Write a rule for each common case:

• A parent calling for a minor child
• A spouse or adult child calling for a patient
• A caregiver for an older or disabled patient
• A parent calling about an adult child, where your authorization rules apply

Consent for how you contact patients

Patients have preferences about contact: a particular number, whether a message can be left, whether texts are welcome. Your rules can ask Katie to collect those preferences, and the summary passes them to staff to record and honor.

Text messages run on your practice number once it is registered for patient texting, which takes about five days during setup. Your practice's consent policy governs who is texted and about what.

One page of rules

Put identification and consent rules onto a single page that staff and Katie both follow. Review it with whoever handles compliance for the practice, and update it when state rules or your services change. Sensitive services, such as hormone therapy or men's health, deserve particular care about who may be told what, and a second identifier beyond name and date of birth is worth considering for them.