4 Must-Do’s

Find out from Implementers: Typical Printer constraints/expectations. E.g. do they expect to use a receipt printer? A4?

1. Problem Description: Have you clearly defined the user problem(s) you intend to solve, and what value this creates? Write down a story, user insight, or quote about this problem (this is important because (1) this will motivate your team, and (2) without this your problem might not actually be a big problem for the users themselves).

2. User Stories: Have you clearly written at least 3 user stories and use cases?

3. Market Analysis: Have you surveyed what the market is doing here (e.g. comparison to other EMRs, or paper approaches; and don’t forget about learning from historic/existing OMRS instances)? Have you written down any possible gaps in your understanding of your users or their workflows? Have you reviewed the topic in FHIR to see what requirements or fields the global community references? (Eg if working on insurance, should look here)

4. Technical Considerations & Dependencies: Have you outlined what you need from cross-functional areas for success of the feature? E.g. do you need the platform to support a new API call? Have you explained how you’ve addressed dev concerns, such as designs that may not be feasible, or will be extra time-intensive to implement?

Optional/Encouraged

Sketches: Have you added a drawing or description of how the feature could work to solve the problem at hand? (Pictures of sketches are ok!)

Project Management: Have you created the Epic and JIRA tasks so you can share work clearly? Roll-out plan: Do you have an idea whether this will be an experiment, gradual roll out, and when? Have you added this to the timeline view? Have you planned how you will promote and/or work with communications folks in order to help this feature reach the widest audience and have the biggest impact it can?

Later but should do

QA Plan: Have you mentioned the plan for QA, such as how you will discover and address edge cases? Does your team/squad have a plan for automated tests to be added to new components (unit tests) or workflows (e2e tests)?

Safety & Tech Risks: Is there any reason you could regret rolling out this feature? (e.g. possible patient harm, heavy tech debt like introducing an unsupported library) Have you thought through the risks for this particular solution? And, how to reduce/address those?

This checklist was inspired by this article. Additional Business Analyst Resources here.

Status: Requirements In Progress

Technical Complexity: Medium

Summary:

A printable visit summary serves both patient-facing needs (personal records, insurance claims) and provider-facing requirements (referrals, discharge documentation, care continuity).

It provides patients with comprehensive visit documentation for personal records, insurance claims, and continuity of care across facilities.
It enables providers to generate clean, printable visit summaries that facilitate seamless referrals and discharges while minimizing manual paperwork.
It ensures insurance companies receive structured, comprehensive visit records that facilitate efficient claim processing and reduce documentation queries.

Source

1. Problem

⚠️ RefApp currently lacks a printable visit summary that serves patient documentation needs and facilitates provider workflows for referrals, discharges, and care coordination.

Lack of printed visit summaries leaves patients without essential documentation for personal health records, facility-to-facility care coordination (where there is no digital records integration), and insurance claims.
Manual visit documentation consumes clinicians' time, introduces inconsistencies and illegibility issues, and results in information gaps during patient referrals, transfers or discharge.
Incomplete or inadequate visit documentation results in delayed insurance claims, disrupts care continuity between facilities, and increases administrative costs through manual, error-prone processes.

Roadmap item: https://openmrs.atlassian.net/browse/OMRS-348

Notable Constraints:

Cost: Printing is considered a very costly expense (for most OpenMRS, low-resource sites). This is because there needs to be a budget for paper and ink that is continuously refilled month by month. For this reason, we generally want to keep printed summaries as dense & simple as possible to reduce paper and ink costs.
- Example: EGPAF Malawi was printing HIV visit summaries on barcode labels!

2. User Stories and Workflows

1️⃣ Patient-Facing Needs

1.1: Patient Portable Records

🎯 As a patient, I want a printed visit summary with clinical findings, medications, and recommendations in clear language for my personal records and future healthcare visits, so I can use the summary to help another provider to understand my clinical issues.

1.2: Patient Insurance Documentation (For Reimbursement)

🎯 As a patient with health insurance, I want a printed visit summary with complete diagnoses, treatments, and billable services for insurance claim submission for reimbursement.

Note that in both of these cases, the end-user is ultimately not the patient: It’s the next provider who reviews the record (next clinician or insurance reviewer). Patient Education is outside of the scope of this project for now.

2️⃣ Provider-Facing Requirements

2.1: Provider Time Optimization

🎯 As a physician, I want automated visit summary generation from EMR data so that I can focus more time on direct patient care rather than manual documentation.

3️⃣ Insurance Claim Processing & Revenue Management

3.1: Insurance Processing & Facility Billing

🎯 As an insurance claims processor and billing manager, I want complete, standardized visit documentation with all required fields and itemized billable services to process claims efficiently, minimize rejections, and reduce reimbursement delays.

4️⃣ Standardized Referral Documentation

4.1: Provider Referral Exchange

🎯 As a referring provider, I want to generate standardized referral summaries with relevant medical history, current medications, allergies, vital signs, and specific consultation questions so that receiving providers have complete information to prepare for the patient visit and deliver optimal care.

4.2: Patient Care Continuity During Referrals

🎯 As a patient being referred, I want complete documentation from my referring doctor so that my next provider has my medical history and I don't have to repeat information during my visit.

3. Market Analysis

Bahmni: https://talk.openmrs.org/t/bahmni-lite-print-certificate/40228/2

Strengths	Key Features

Strengths

Key Features

Demographics (name, age, gender, address, identifiers)
Visit / Encounter Details
Clinical Observations (vitals, symptoms, lab results)
Diagnoses & Conditions
Medications & Treatments
Procedures & Orders
Discharge Notes / Clinical Notes

Ensures correct patient identity and supports referrals or transfers.
Provides a structured overview of each consultation or hospital admission.
Offers a consolidated view of patient condition for follow-up care or external referrals.
Highlights current and past conditions for continuity of care.
Lists prescriptions and treatments given, helping avoid duplication and errors.
Captures clinical interventions (e.g., lab/imaging requests).
Enables narrative summaries that contextualize structured data

❶ Bahmni – Printable Patient Report (Summary)

❷ Bahmni – Printable Patient Report (Summary)

❸ Bahmni – Printable Patient Report (Summary)

❹ Bahmni – Printable Patient Report (Summary)

Openemr:

Strengths	Key Features

Strengths	Key Features
Quick reference for a patient’s active and past conditions. Detailed medication information including RxNorm code, status, form, strength, quantity, indications Flexible—clinicians can print only what’s relevant for a referral, summary, or insurance claim. Patient report can be generated for a specified period	Medical Problems / Diagnoses Medications Customizable Sections (checkbox selection before generating report) Date range selection

Continuity of Care Record - Report Generation

Continuity of Care Record - Generated Report

Continuity of Care Document - Customizable Sections

Continuity of Care Document - Generated Report

PIH EMR

Strengths	Key Features