Epic Skills Assessment Clinical Workflow Fundamentals 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which Epic feature allows a provider to document a telephone encounter with a patient who calls the clinic?
- In Basket Phone Message
- MyChart messaging
- Telephone encounter type in scheduling (Correct answer)
- Secure Chat
Correct answer: Telephone encounter type in scheduling
A telephone encounter is a specific encounter type that creates a billable, documentable record of a phone-based patient interaction.
Question 2: What is the purpose of the 'Best Practice Advisory' (BPA) in Epic clinical workflows?
- To automatically deny insurance claims
- To alert clinicians to evidence-based recommendations or potential safety issues (Correct answer)
- To schedule follow-up appointments
- To route orders to the correct department
Correct answer: To alert clinicians to evidence-based recommendations or potential safety issues
BPAs are configurable alerts that fire when clinical logic detects a potential gap in care, safety risk, or guideline deviation.
Question 3: A patient's allergy to penicillin is documented in Epic. When a provider orders amoxicillin, what clinical decision support feature fires?
- A duplicate therapy alert
- A drug-allergy interaction alert (Correct answer)
- A formulary substitution suggestion
- A renal dosing warning
Correct answer: A drug-allergy interaction alert
Epic's drug-allergy checking compares ordered medications against the patient's documented allergy list and alerts the provider to cross-reactive drugs.
Question 4: Which workflow in Epic is used to document a patient's consent for a procedure?
- Order Entry
- Media tab or Consent activity (Correct answer)
- Problem List
- MyChart Portal
Correct answer: Media tab or Consent activity
Informed consent documentation is captured in the Media tab or a dedicated Consent activity, linking the signed document to the patient's chart.
Question 5: During an inpatient stay, a nurse notes a new symptom not currently on the problem list. What is the appropriate Epic workflow?
- Notify the provider via In Basket and document in nursing notes (Correct answer)
- Add the symptom to the problem list without provider authorization
- Discharge the patient and document at the next visit
- Delete the existing problem list and start fresh
Correct answer: Notify the provider via In Basket and document in nursing notes
Nurses document new findings in nursing notes and notify providers through In Basket; providers then decide whether to add items to the problem list.
Question 6: What does the Epic 'Snapshot' or 'Patient Summary' provide to an incoming provider?
- A real-time feed of lab results only
- A condensed overview of key patient information for quick situational awareness (Correct answer)
- A billing summary for the encounter
- A list of all scheduled future appointments
Correct answer: A condensed overview of key patient information for quick situational awareness
The Patient Summary or Snapshot consolidates vital signs, active problems, medications, allergies, and recent results into a single view for rapid review.
Question 7: A provider wants to reuse a previous note structure for a similar visit type. Which Epic feature supports this most efficiently?
- Copy-forward a previous note using SmartTools (Correct answer)
- Manually retype the previous note
- Import from an external EHR
- Use the billing module to retrieve past encounters
Correct answer: Copy-forward a previous note using SmartTools
SmartTools such as SmartText and the copy-forward feature allow providers to pull in prior note content and update it efficiently.
Epic Skills Assessment Clinical Workflow Fundamentals 3
Which Epic feature allows a provider to document a telephone encounter with a patient who calls the clinic?