Guidelines for Updating Facility Specific Procedure Notes

The purpose of the Facility Specific Procedure Notes section is to allow facilities to add additional information to individual consent forms.

Before asking Specialty Chiefs what they would like to add to this field, be sure to communicate the national VA guidelines (below) and take a few minutes to enter iMedConsent using a test patient record and review the revised “Description of Treatment/Procedure” screen. The information added to this new field will appear in the lower box of the wizard screen and will be imported into the final form immediately after the nationally standardized treatment/procedure description text.

Also review the information in the “Additional Information” field. Many facilities have inserted information in this field that is not applicable to all treatments/procedures (e.g., information about medical device insertion and tissue disposal). Since such information only pertains to a certain subset of treatments/procedures, consider removing it from the “Additional Information” field and adding it to the “Facility Specific Procedure Notes” field for the relevant treatments/procedures.

The types of information appropriate for addition to this field are restricted by national VA guidelines below. Any questions or concerns about what may be added to this field, should be directed to the VHA National Center for Ethics in Health Care (vhaethics@va.gov).

National VA Guidelines for Addition of Content:

Content added to the Facility Specific Procedure Notes must be reviewed and approved by the relevant specialty chief at each facility, and must conform to the guidelines below.

Appropriate content includes: Logistical information about the treatment/procedure that is relevant to local practice. For example:

  “This procedure is performed in Suite 410, in Wing B of the hospital.”

or

  “You will be given directions to Suite 410 and pre-op instructions before you leave the  
   hospital today.”

Additional information not covered in the treatment/procedure description including:

• Tissue disposal


• Medical device insertion




Inappropriate content (not permitted) includes:

• Additional risks


• Additional benefits


• Additional alternatives




NOTE: Dialog Medical has been authorized to instruct facilities to remove or revise inappropriate content.