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What are prenatal flowsheets?

Elation’s prenatal flowsheets allow providers to track certain bodily metrics for pregnant patients and their fetus from conception to parturition. The metrics that can be tracked are:
  • expected delivery date
  • last menstrual period
  • pre-pregnancy weight
  • pre-pregnancy blood pressure
  • gestational age (GA)
  • weight
  • blood pressure
  • urine
  • fetal movement (FM)
  • pre-term labor (PTL Sx)
  • fetal heart rate (FHR)
  • fundal height (F. Ht)
  • cervical statistics
  • presentation (Pres)
  • edema

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How to turn on prenatal flowsheets

Since prenatal flowsheets are only used by Obstetricians and certain Gynecologists, this prenatal flowsheet feature is only made available upon request. To request this feature, new practices can notify their Implementation Specialist and other customers can contact Support using the “I need help” >> “I need help from an Elation Team Member” option and a member of the Elation Team will turn this feature on for you. Prenatal flowsheets will appear in the Clinical Profile once the feature is turned on.

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Creating a new prenatal flowsheet

Each prenatal flowsheet is intended to track a single pregnancy. To create a new prenatal flowsheet, go to the Clinical Profile on the left-hand side of the chart and click the “+ Add Flowsheet” button, as seen in the screenshot below.
  • The top of the flowsheet is designated for the entire pregnancy. The synopsis section can be used for a pregnancy-specific problem list, or any other notable elements about the pregnancy.
  • At the bottom of the flowsheet, providers can add individual OB visits. The only required fields are the current date and gestational age. The gestational age calculates automatically once the “Estimated Delivery Date (EDD)” and current date fields are completed.
The “Notes” section appears small, but it has no character limit and will expand as notes are added.

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Updating prenatal flowsheets

A single prenatal flowsheet is intended to track a single pregnancy. Each prenatal flowsheet should have multiple OB visits. Do not click “End Flowsheet” until a pregnancy is completed.Providers should click the “Sign” button after recording each OB visit to save the recorded details. If you are not ready to sign off on the visit, click “Save as Draft & Close” and come back to the record at a later time. Drafted visits will appear in the Requiring Action section of the patient’s chart.

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Provider-staff collaboration

Since staff often times record weight, blood pressure, and urine, the prenatal flowsheets were designed with those three vitals listed first. With this format, staff is able to record necessary vitals for individual OB visits and save them as a draft. When the provider goes in to see the patient, they can simply open the saved draft and review/add any additional information before signing off on the visit. Once the note is signed by the provider, a new row will appear on the flowsheet with their initials under the “Signed” column. You can hover your mouse over the initials to see the provider’s full name and credentials.

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Multi-provider collaboration

Any provider in your practice can access a patient’s prenatal flowsheets through the patient’s Clinical Profile, which makes it easy for multiple providers to collaborate on the same flowsheet. Additionally, the “Signed” column allows you to see which providers saw the patient throughout her pregnancy at a glance.

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Sharing prenatal flowsheets

When a patient checks into the hospital for delivery, providers typically need to send the patient’s prenatal flowsheet along with key pregnancy lab results. The best way to gather and send the necessary information is by attaching the patient’s flowsheet, relevant labs, and Clinical Profile to an outbound Letter and faxing it electronically, directly to the hospital. For more information on sending letters in Elation, refer to Letters & Referrals Guide- Sending messages to patients & corresponding with third party professionals article. If your patient would like to have a copy of their flowsheet to bring directly to the hospital, anyone at your practice will be able to print the flowsheet by clicking “Actions” >> “Print Flowsheet” at any time.

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Completing prenatal flowsheets

Once the pregnancy has been completed, open the patient’s prenatal flowsheet and click “Actions” >> “End Flowsheet”.
If you accidentally ended a flowsheet prior to a pregnancy being completed, click on the completed flowsheet in the Clinical Profile and then click “Reopen Flowsheet”.

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

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Why are weight, blood pressure, and urine listed before the other pregnancy vitals?

Since weight, blood pressure, and urine are often recorded by staff, Elation listed those first to make it easy for providers to visually confirm vitals entered by staff.

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What should I do if my patient is going to have multiple births (twins, triplets, etc.)?

If a patient is going to have twins, triplets, etc, you may need to record multiple vitals for the fetus. Since the fetal heart rate is typically the only item needing to have multiple records, we recommend putting all fetal heart rate recordings next to each other, separated by a slash.

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How do I edit an OB visit?

Best practice is to review the details of an OB visit for accuracy and completeness before clicking the “Sign” button. If you need to edit any details, enter all of the details of the signed OB visit into a new OB visit, sign the new OB visit entry and then click “Delete” next to the old OB entry to delete the inaccurate visit.