What do I do if I see "Warning from Ocean: Notes and eRequests Require Download"?

Background

Ocean is not an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system and does not store patient data long-term. This approach follows privacy guidelines that recommend minimizing the storage of personal health information.

Every Monday morning, Ocean checks for patient data that is scheduled for deletion and may require a manual export or download to an EMR. This includes online referrals, website form submissions, and patient notes. An automatic deletion warning email is sent to the Ocean site contact at that time to alert them.

Steps to Take

The deletion warning email includes a list of items that are due to be removed from Ocean. Ocean Sites should review these to determine if any action is needed. This may include a manual export or download of information to the EMR, extending the purge date, or allowing the information to be deleted.

eReferrals & eConsults

If there are any eReferrals/eConsults in a 'Declined' or 'Cancelled' state that are due to be archived, the email will indicate those that are pending archival and how to review them.

Examples of potential actions for you to take when an eReferral/eConsult in a 'Declined' or 'Cancelled' state is due to be archived include:

Allow the eReferral/eConsult to be archived

If an eReferral/eConsult is flagged for scheduled archival and upon reviewing it you determine that no action is required (e.g., the referral is no longer necessary or relevant), you can simply allow the archival to take place as scheduled.

A final copy of the eReferral/eConsult can be optimally imported into your EMR or downloaded to your computer for record-keeping purposes using the 'Import to EMR' or 'Download Referral Record' options in the Action menu of the eReferral/eConsult.

Resubmit or Redirect the eReferral/eConsult

If an eReferral/eConsult is flagged for scheduled archival and upon reviewing it you determine that the referral is still necessary or relevant, the eReferral/eConsult can be resubmitted to the last recipient (by the referrer or the recipient), or alternatively redirected by the referrer it to a new recipient. More details on both of these options can be found in: How do I Resubmit or Redirect a cancelled/declined eReferral/eConsult?

Assign the eReferral/eConsult for Review

If an eReferral/eConsult is flagged for scheduled archival and upon reviewing it you determine that it requires the attention of another user on your Ocean Site, you can assign it to them for review.

Once it has been assigned for review by a particular user, the eReferral/eConsult's scheduled archival date may* be adjusted to a minimum of 365 days after the date that the review was requested.

Extend the Scheduled Removal Date by 60 Days

If an eReferral/eConsult is flagged for scheduled archival, you can locate it in the 'Deletion Warnings' folder within the eConsults & eReferrals area and click the refresh symbol (circular arrow) at the end of the row to extend the scheduled archival date by 60 days from the current date (i.e., the date that the refresh symbol was clicked).

*Note

The examples provided above specifically use the term "may" when referring to the adjustment made to the scheduled archival date as a result of the action taken. This language has been purposefully used as it cannot be guaranteed that the action being taken is the sole contributor to a referral's scheduled archival date.

For more details regarding eReferral/eConsult storage in Ocean, please refer to this support article: How long will my eConsults/eReferrals be stored in Ocean?

Website Form Submissions

If there are any Website Form submissions that are due to be removed but have not been exported/downloaded, the email will tell you how many are pending removal and how to review them. Even if you are processing the submission as part of the initial "acceptance" workflow, it's a good idea to heed these warnings and export them for audit purposes.

You can do this by clicking the 'Import to EMR' button within the submission to trigger the download of the submission into your EMR (if your Ocean Site is integrated with your EMR), or you can manually download a PDF copy by opening the 'Action' menu within the submission and clicking 'Download Referral Record'.

You can then mark the submission as 'Completed', if appropriate.

Note: Website Form submissions that have been marked as 'Completed' do not trigger deletion warnings.

Patient Notes

For Ocean Sites that are not integrated using Ocean Cloud Connect, the email contains the EMR ID and the Ocean reference number of patients that have not been marked "downloaded to the EMR". We call these "orphaned notes" since the EMR has not claimed them promptly.

These notifications can be confusing. See below for a few quick FAQs.

What circumstances would lead to an orphaned note?

The PS Suite Custom Form integration and the OSCAR Classic EMR integration (i.e., Ocean Sites that do not use Cloud Connect) are only able to download notes when the chart for a particular patient is open and connected to Ocean. If the patient's chart isn't open or the chart doesn't know about the Ocean note, the note can remain orphaned.

Notes can be orphaned for a few reasons:
  • For an Ocean Site not using Cloud Connect, a web questionnaire was sent and the patient's chart hasn't been opened for months. Ocean has a configurable expiry date (default of 100 days), after which it will remove the patient, note and all. If you send out web questionnaires months in advance (e.g. a pediatrician sending an intake package to newly pregnant women), then this time period may expire before the chart is opened to download the note.
  • For an Ocean Site using the PS Suite Custom Form integration (i.e., not Cloud Connect), the Ocean Custom Form was removed from a chart in PS Suite before a tablet session or web questionnaire is complete.
  • A tablet session was completed and the initial note was downloaded, then the same ref was used to load the tablet again for the same patient. In this case, the Ocean Custom Form would be deleted after the first tablet session completed -- the notes associated with subsequent completions will be orphaned since the link to the EMR chart is broken.

    Note: If you are only using tablets (and not web questionnaires), most likely any "real" missing notes would be noticed at the time of the appointment and you can ignore the notifications.

What should you do about these orphaned notes?
  1. Login to the Ocean Portal. If you aren't already in the Patients view, click the "Menu" button in the top left corner and select "Patients".
  2. Review the outstanding notes by searching for your patients using their Ocean reference number. If this is the first time you are logging in to Ocean on your computer, you will need to enter your shared encryption key to see the encrypted data.
  3. A quick scan of the notes will usually give you some indication whether they are real or not. If appropriate, copy & paste the note into your EMR patient chart and remove the Ocean patient and patient record from Ocean.

Hint: If you want to pull a note back into PS Suite, simply insert the Ocean custom form as you would normally for that patient, click the generated 3 or 4 digit number and update it to the Ocean reference you want to import -- within a few seconds the note and any demographic changes will be downloaded and applied automatically.

How do I reduce the number of times this happens?

It depends on why you are getting orphaned notes.

  • If the leading cause is early-sending of web questionnaires, you can either act on the completion notification and download the note then, or extend the expiry date on the invitation to more than 100 days.
  • If the leading cause is testing, the warnings ought to settle down after a while.
  • Finally, if the leading cause is staff miskeys (i.e. removing the custom form or re-entering the Ocean patient reference number on the tablet after the patient has completed their forms), a recap on training might be appropriate.

However, the root cause of these issues may be something else specific to your workflow or process. If you think that you are getting too many orphaned notes, let us know at ocean.tips/support.

Where do Deletion Warning emails get sent to?

Depending on the nature of the data due to be removed and the configuration of your Ocean Site, the deletion warning emails may get sent to different email addresses. The logic for deletion warning emails is outlined below:

  • If only Website Forms/eReferrals/eConsults are due to be removed from your Ocean Site, the deletion warning email will be sent to the 'Default Incoming Referral Notification Email' configured in your Ocean Site's eReferrals & eConsults configuration area.
    • If no 'Default Incoming Referral Notification Email' has been set, the deletion warning email will be sent to the 'Clinical Administrator / Ocean Support Contact' email configured in your Ocean Site's Site Account settings area.
      • If no 'Clinical Administrator / Ocean Support Contact' email has been configured, the deletion warning email will be sent to the email address associated with Ocean user account set as the 'Payer' for your Ocean Site.
  • If Website Forms/eReferrals/eConsults and Patient Notes are due to be removed from your Ocean Site, the deletion warning email will be sent to the 'Default Incoming Referral Notification Email' configured in your Ocean Site's eReferrals & eConsults configuration area and the 'Clinical Administrator / Ocean Support Contact' email configured in your Ocean Site's Site Account settings area.
    • If no 'Clinical Administrator / Ocean Support Contact' has been configured, the email address associated with Ocean user account set as the 'Payer' for your Ocean Site will be used as a substitute.
  • If only Patient Notes are due to be removed from your Ocean Site, the deletion warning email will be sent to the 'Clinical Administrator / Ocean Support Contact' email configured in your Ocean Site's Site Account settings area.
    • If no 'Clinical Administrator / Ocean Support Contact' email has been configured, the deletion warning email will be sent to the email address associated with Ocean user account set as the 'Payer' for your Ocean Site.
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