Inpatient Diet and Nutrition Order Changes - Action Needed

Effective December 2, 2025, all Connect Care inpatient diet and nutrition orders are being updated to improve patient safety and standardization, and to update diet options. The orders are being updated with new content, display, and functionality. These changes impact all inpatient and Continuing Care settings. As these changes will break personalization, prescribers will have to re-personalize affected order sets (note that no action is required for surgical order sets).

How This Will Impact Prescribers

• Re-personalization: Personalized orders with a "Diet and Nutrition" section will have to be reviewed and updated. Supports will be available to help prescribers with re-personalization (details below). 
• When diet/nutrition changes are required: If your patient requires diet/nutrition changes, please place new orders using the browse or system order sets, and avoid modifying or re-ordering old orders from the order history.

Support for Re-Personalization

The CMIO Prescriber Experience and Training Team will be holding virtual office hour sessions over the first 2 weeks of December. Note these sessions are also open to prescribers needing re-personalization support for the Induction of Labour order set changes also going live December 2.

• December 2, 2025, 14:00–16:00
• December 4, 2025, 10:00–12:00
• December 9, 2025, 15:00–17:00
• December 11, 2025, 11:00–13:00

The Help Desk will also be able to help prescribers outside the above hours, and tip sheets are available to guide prescribers through the re-personalization process. See the Manual for information on how to access the virtual office hours, and for more details on the changes.

• Manual: Inpatient Diet and Nutrition Order Changes - Information and Supports
• Poster: Drop-In for Re-Personalization Support

Changes to Daily Lab Orders for Inpatients

Last month it was announced that, to reduce unnecessary testing and improve patient care, restrictions would be imposed in Connect Care on the use of daily lab orders for inpatients. The original change created some issues with signing periprocedural orders, and so the change was rolled back. A fix has now been found and so, effective November 18, 2025, the default number of occurrences for daily lab orders will be set to 3 days, with a maximum of 7 days. 

All admission order sets will be impacted. Personalized orders will have to be adjusted after the change to align with the new limits; supports will be available to help prescribers with re-personalization (details below). Prescribers signing periprocedural orders should not encounter problems again, but are encouraged to log a ticket if they notice any issues.

Inpatient orders for frequencies other than daily as well as outpatient orders will not be affected at this time.  

How This Will Impact Prescribers

• Occurrence field default: For lab orders with a frequency of daily (including daily morning, daily afternoon, daily evening, daily timed, first occurrence then every 24hrs), the default will be 3 occurrences and can be adjusted to a maximum of 7. There will be no hard stops in the occurrence field, but will default to 3 days when left blank upon signing.
• Order validation warning: An order validation warning will identify which orders are not able to be signed without changes. The warning will appear when placing personalized orders, order panels, and/or order sets that have default occurrence of greater than 7 days for daily lab orders. 
• Modifying/reordering: Daily orders can be modified/reordered at any time for up to 7 days. The “edit multiple” tool can be used to efficiently change the frequency and number of occurrences for multiple orders at once. 
• Expiring labs: As previously posted, expiring repeating inpatient lab orders show up in the "Expiring Orders" section of the Orders activity 3 days before they expire. An "Expiring Repeating Lab 2d" column is also available to add to the Patient List to visually flag orders expiring within 48 hours. 
• Order review: All inpatient lab orders should be reviewed at least weekly for ongoing appropriateness.

Support for Re-Personalization

Tip sheets to help prescribers with re-personalization of orders, order panels, and/or order sets are linked below. The Help Desk will be able to help prescribers needing additional support to navigate this change (1-877-311-4300, press 1 for Connect Care).

• Tip: Personalizing Order Sets
• Tip: Personalizing Orders and Order Panels

PAC Optimization Project Launching October 21

The Preadmission Clinic (PAC) Optimization Project will launch on October 21, 2025, bringing important updates to pre-procedure workflows that directly affect prescribers across surgical and non-surgical specialties. These changes are designed to improve scheduling accuracy, reduce late cancellations, and streamline ordering. 

This project affects over 3,500 prescribers across Alberta, including surgeons, anesthesiologists, proceduralists, and others. The CMIO Prescriber Experience and Training Team is committed to supporting you through these changes.

Key Changes for Prescribers

Prescribers will see updates to the following (see the PAC Optimization Project page in the Connect Care Manual for more details). The order set changes will break existing personalization, so prescribers will need to re-personalize their order sets.

• Case Request Order: New questions and layout changes.
• PAC Appointment Request: Will be a standalone order.
• Preprocedure Order Sets: Revised with new and updated orders. 
• PAC Orders in Preprocedure Sets: All PAC orders will be signed and held.

Support for Re-Personalization

To help prescribers navigate these changes, there will be various levels of support available (see the PAC Optimization Project Manual page for more details):

• Virtual Drop-in Room: October 21-24 and 27-31 during daytime hours.
• Poster: PAC Optimization Virtual Drop-in (Prescribers and MOAs)
• Help Desk Support: For non-urgent and after hours support.
• Premade Preprocedure Order Sets: Available in system October 21.
• Updated Training Materials: Available by October 20.

What You Can Do Now

• Review your current order sets and prepare for re-personalization.
• Watch the PAC Optimization Project page in the Connect Care Manual for updates closer to launch.
• Bookmark Help Desk contact info for launch week.

For questions or personalized support, contact:

• Dr. Alan Sobey – Physician Design Lead (PDL)
• help.cmio@ahs.ca

Dragon Medical One - Launch 6 Personalization Sessions

Personalization sessions for Connect Care's in-system dictation software, Dragon Medical One (DMO), are coming up for Connect Care Launch 6 prescribers. Those in previous launches (1-5) are also welcome to attend.

The personalization sessions are scheduled for the following dates/times:

• Thursday, June 29, 2023: 18:00-19:00
• Wednesday, July 5, 2023: 12:00-13:00

Registration is through MyLearningLink (MLL) (course name: Dragon Medical One (DMO) - Dictation Optimization Sessions), and sessions are via Zoom.

• Contact: speechrecognition@ahs.ca

BBHR: Interactive Patient Lists

Building a Better Health Record (BBHR)

As part of our documentation quality improvement initiative, we promote practical ways for clinicians to comply with minimum use norms.

Interactive Patient Lists

The Connect Care clinical information system (CIS) includes powerful tools for accessing, personalizing, building and sharing patient lists.

Those working on inpatient ward, consult or service teams can benefit from the creation of one or more personalized lists. Unfortunately, it can be daunting to know which columns (often with many similarly named options to choose from) to line up for a specific clinical need. 

A clinician-led working group has established standards for Patient List design and has used those to produce a growing set of high-performing, validated and clinician-recommended list columns (easy to recognize as descriptors start with "[AHS]"). In addition, a set of 6 patient list templates can help users initiate personal lists with preferred columns.

To start or adapt a "My List" personal list:

• Use the "Edit List" menu (top left of Patient Lists activity) to pick the "Properties" submenu.
• Look for a "Copy" button at the bottom left of the "Available Columns" section in the list editor. Click this.
• Note the list templates with names that start with "++AHS IP MD..." (near the top of the pick-list) and select a template fitting the clinical workflow (e.g., ward rounds, ward consults, emergency consults).
• Either use the patient list configuration as is, or add/remove columns to personalize. Columns that have descriptors starting with "[AHS]" are preferred.

A number of enhancements respond to user requests:

• Content - Columns display succinct information that is formatted to comply with AHS standards.
• Hover - Hovering over columns within patient rows triggers pop-up displays of relevant information.
• Double-click - Activating a column within a patient row will either open a relevant editing tool within the list or will open the patient chart to a relevant activity.
• Sorting - This is optimized for clinical use case.
• Report - Again defaulted to best fit the clinical use case.

A number of Patient Lists resources have been updated:

• Manual: Patient Lists
• Tip: Managing Patient Lists
• Crib-Sheet: Patient List Templates
• Demo: Patient List Templates
• Reference: Preferred Patient List Columns

Impact of System Changes on Personalizations

"Personalization" tools help Connect Care users to streamline workflows, increase efficiency and decrease information burdens. It is possible to save groups of orders (with all desired settings) as a personal panel, for example, and reduce a multi-step process to just a few clicks the next time it is needed. Personalization tools can also be used to record common documentation, billing and other tasks for quick recall. Full order sets can be saved with one's usual choices.

So, what happens if one of the pieces of a saved personalization is changed system-wide? A specific medication may be discontinued, new data might be required for a laboratory test requisition, and building blocks used in text automations (e.g., SmartPhrases) may be updated.

Most system updates do not affect personalizations that users may have saved. Others, such as changed medications or tests, could have a significant impact. We are working on a simple guide to help users anticipate impactful changes. We are also working on an online listing of all system changes that might affect personalizations.

In general, changes are made obvious to users. Where possible, users are alerted to the changed object with a hard stop when trying to use a personalization containing the object. The personalized preference list can then be updated to again use the prescriber's default answer, and the hard stop will be removed.