Supporting Patients with Disabilities

Special needs are disabilities identified by a patient. To ensure that you offer patients with special needs appropriate and compassionate care and a positive experience in your practice, you should plan to accommodate their needs.

Special needs include:

• Autism
• Cognitive impairment or disability
• Hearing impairment
• Physical mobility impairment
• Speech and language impairment
• Vision impairment

• Accommodate patients with special needs using available resources in the practice and throughout the hospital (e.g., Patient Navigator, preferred appointment availability, sign language interpreter). Refer to the Special Needs Resource Guide for complete information and best practices.

• Establish and regularly review written guidelines that help schedulers and clinical professionals coordinate and prepare for any special accommodations patients may require during an appointment.

• Document special needs at the time of scheduling in the appropriate Epic fields per eCare training and best practice guidelines. See the Documenting Patient Disabilities and Accommodations Using the Special Needs Flag Tip Sheet.

Accommodating Support Persons

Patients may require support persons to accompany them during ambulatory visits due to

• intellectual or cognitive disabilities (e.g., autism, Down syndrome, dementia)
• communication barriers (e.g., deafness, blindness)
• sensory issues (e.g., autism)
• mental health concerns (e.g. anxiety disorder, PTSD).

The support person may be a family member, personal care assistant, disability service provider or similar proxy, and is identified by the patient or the patient’s legal guardian or health care proxy.

The support person is a part of the health care team, as they provide direct support or care that impacts the patient’s clinical outcomes, including assistance with

• implementing specialized support strategies to help the patient comply with treatments
• facilitating communication between the patient and hospital staff (i.e., can aid the patient with using an alternative and augmentative communication device or tool)
• managing sensory aspects of the environment and interventions to improve the patient’s tolerance.

Identification of the support person and their role should occur upon arrival to the care setting or, ideally, before arrival at the hospital, and should be documented in the medical record. If the disability is documented in Epic, it is not required to set the FYI flag for the accompanying support person for an ambulatory visit.

Like other visitors, a support person must undergo screening for COVID-19 symptoms and will not be permitted to attend the visit if they are showing symptoms or have an active COVID-19 infection.