Epic Recruitment Tools

UC Health offers Epic recruitment services which include Point of Care Alerts ,Silent Alerts, and MyChart Recruitment. 

• If you are seeking these tools for a new study, you can go to our Research Approval form to request them.
• If the study is already in Epic, place a request in footprints​ using your UC Health log in credentials (See Job Aide on the right for assistance with this).

Point of Care Alerts

Point of Care Recruitments are Provider Facing BPA Alerts. To set this up, coordinator works with IST to create the Alert Trigger with desired Inclusion/Exclusion Criteria. Once in Production… The Provider (typically MDs) will be able to see the Alert that the patient is a potential candidate for  the specific Research Study. The MD will review the “Provider Facing Description” with the patient and select the patients Interested/Declined response.

Silent Alerts

“Silent Point of Care”  is Similar to  “Point of Care”, but these alerts are sent as an in basket message to you. To set this up, coordinator works with IST to create the Alert Trigger with desired Inclusion/Exclusion Criteria The Alert is set to Trigger  when a particular chart Activity is opened But  …the Alert Never presents to the Provider  - rather the “System” auto sends an Epic In Basket Message to the Coordinator (Pool). When the patient chart Activity is opened during the encounter, research Recruitment Message might say….”Potential Candidate for XYZ Study “. Coordinators can then Follow-up with the patient and update Epic with the patient’s enrollment status. Managing Messages in In Basket is important to keep the volume down. Here are some recommendations for this:

• Sending to “Pools” is recommended – A Pool is an In Basket “Group” that several coordinators can access
• They can be setup for your “Team”- Cancer Team 1  Cancer Team 2 – then multiple study recruitment messages can go to that Pool and you can monitor several studies from the same Pool
• When Coordinators leave or are added to your team- they simply need to check themselves into or out of the “Pool”

MyChart Recruitment

MyChart recruitment is a patient facing recruitment method. Study teams will submit a request for MyChart recruitment that will include inclusion/exclusion criteria, an IRB approved patient facing message (typically a copy of the study’s tear pad), and a partial HIPAA waiver. The OCR will then build a report in Epic based on inclusion/exclusion criteria and UC Health IS&T will add the IRB approved language to the MyChart message. Once the report accuracy and patient facing language has been confirmed, the report will be released to the study the coordinator.

Coordinators will run the report and prescreen the patients in the report to determine the most appropriate potential participants. Coordinators can then select the target patients and send the IRB approved recruitment message through MyChart. All patients sent the recruitment message will be associated with the study in Epic with a status of “Contacted-Pending Response” until they respond as either interested or not interested. As patients respond, coordinators will receive notifications in their Epic InBasket and are able to contact patients who respond as interested in the study. Coordinators should update the patient enrollment statuses in Epic if patients end up consenting or enrolling after receiving a MyChart message. This will allow study teams to monitor the success of the tool.

Important Note About Partial HIPAA Waivers

Please keep in mind that your study will need a partial HIPAA waiver from your study's IRB in order to pursue these options. HIPAA authorization to use and disclose protected health information may be waived for just part of the research. The term Partial Waiver, can be confused with an Alteration of HIPAA Authorization. The NIH Fact Sheet on Clinical Research and the HIPAA Privacy Rule explains a partial waiver as follows:

"A partial waiver of the Authorization requirements of the Privacy Rule might be requested, for instance, to allow a researcher to obtain PHI as necessary to recruit potential research subjects. For example, even if an IRB does not waive the Authorization requirement for the entire research study, an IRB may partially waive the Authorization requirement to permit a covered entity to disclose PHI to a researcher for the purposes of contacting and recruiting individuals into the study."

MyChart Recruitment Resources