Oklahoma Heart Institute appreciates the opportunity to provide you and your patients with cardiology consultation services. It is our policy to provide you with timely service so you can manage your patient’s care as efficiently as possible.

In order to expedite the process and save your patient time and expense, we have developed a standard process for records request. We hope this will help you in putting together records to send to us when you request the first consult.

If you have any questions, please call our office at (918) 574-9000 and ask for the clinical scheduler.

• We must have a diagnosis for either a consult or diagnostic procedure.
• If a diagnostic test is requested, please indicate what the referring physician is looking for.
• Please have the patient bring all medications to the scheduled appointment.
• If the consult or procedure is scheduled within 2-3 days, we will not mail information forms. The patient should arrive at Oklahoma Heart 30 minutes prior to the scheduled appointment to fill out the appropriate forms.
• If the patient is self-pay and has no phone number, please have the patient speak with the financial counselor at Oklahoma Heart while the patient is still in your office so payment arrangements can be made prior to the appointment. If this is not possible, the financial counselor will talk with the patient when he or she arrives for the scheduled appointment.

Consults

• Please ask the patient if he or she has had any kind of cardiac testing or procedures in the past, such as EKGs (most recent), blood analysis work, Holter Monitor, echocardiogram, exercise stress test, thallium or nuclear imaging scan, cardiac catheterization, CABG, etc.
• If the patient has had testing, we would like to see copies of all reports. On treadmill stress tests, we would like to see the complete report, including all EKG tracings. We do not need the EKG tracings for thallium studies. For holter monitors, we need all the tracings.
• If procedures such as cardiac catheterization and coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG) were done and you do not have copies of the reports, please have the patient sign a release for the reports and forward it.
• If the patient is in your office when you are scheduling the consult, please give the patient copies of the records which can be brought to the Oklahoma Heart office at the scheduled appointment time.
• We need all patient records prior to the scheduled appointment time.

Diagnostic Procedures

Venous Study

When ordering venous studies, please indicate which extremity is affected. Order it as an upper or lower, right or left venous study. Do not use Rule Out as a diagnosis. Examples of diagnoses that may be used are edema, extremity pain, discoloration, varicose veins, and deep venous thrombosis.

Arterial Study

Please indicate if you want the arterial study with or without exercise. If exercise is requested, please give the patients the following instructions for walking on the treadmill. Examples of diagnoses that may be used are extremity pain, claudication, decreased pulses, numbness, extremity coldness, discoloration.

Exercise Stress Test

Please give the patient the following instructions:

• Do not eat for two hours prior to the test.
• Wear comfortable walking shoes and clothes for walking on treadmill. Avoid overalls or one piece outfits.
• Avoid lotion or skin softener on the chest area on the day of the test.
• Do not take beta blockers (Lopressor, Atenolol, etc.) the morning of the test unless the physician is looking for medical efficacy.

Exercise Echocardiogram

Please indicate whether you would like a full echocardiogram done before stress testing. Also, give the patient the same instructions as listed above for exercise stress tests.

Echocardiogram with Doppler Evaluation

Examples of diagnoses that may be used when ordering this evaluation are: chest pain, SOB, dizziness, edema, CHF, palpitations, syncope, HTN, murmur, CAD, suspected MI (location), family history of CAD, cardiomyopathy, IHSS or any valvular diagnosis such as MVP, valve replacements, stenosis or regurgitation, TIA or CVA (for cardiac source of embolism).

Carotid and Duplex Scans

Examples of diagnoses that may be used when ordering carotid studies are syncope, dizziness, vertigo, right or left sided weakness, extremity numbness or tingling, speech changes, memory changes, visual changes, headaches, ataxia, TIA, CVA. All of the above tests use Doppler as part of the procedure.