For specialty practices large and small, optimizing functionality is a common concern, especially when taking into account future changes beyond Meaningful Use, the transition to ICD-10, and other heathcare mandates.
Many practices can fall victim to otherwise avoidable failures due to under-optimized processes brought on by insufficient practice management and EMR systems. By keeping dated, impractical or outright faulty tools, you put your entire operation at unnecessary risk, which can result in:
- Billing and patient payment errors
- Poor data capture
- Increased manual entry. One of the most important steps your practice can is a implementing fully-integrated, compliant, intuitive software solution, which can negate these risks through streamlined functionality.
Choosing a vendor or medical software provider with an all-in-one practice management and EMR solution can help ensure compliance, create fluid data flow, minimize errors, and maximize savings.
How Choosing the Wrong System Can Hurt Your Practice
No matter your specialty, keeping an ineffective system only serves to hurt your bottom line. If the system’s functionality does not meet the needs of your practice, it creates inefficiency and decreased profitability. Typically, this can snowball into other problems, including:
- Increased data entry
- Reporting errors
- Decreased payments
- Worst and most damaging of all, patient dissatisfaction What You Can Do: Implementing a Compliant, All-In-One Solution
Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be hard to avoid these common failures by making sure your practice is equipped with reliable, compliant and fully integrated tools.
The best solutions are those that meet the specific needs of your practice and specialty, whether it is ophthalmology, dermatology or plastic surgery. When selecting a new vendor, keep in mind the unique needs of your practice and your long-term goals. Some features you should look for to ensure optimization are:
- Compliance with the latest healthcare mandates
- Built-in, intuitive functionality that makes changes to your practice, such as the transition to ICD-10, as simple and interruption-free as possible
- Flexible, customizable EMR software that can adapt to your workflow
- Robust and innovative functionality that is easy to use and supports long-term growth
- A system that is easy to use, with templates that can be changed anytime within your practice
- A vendor with a collaborative, consultative approach to ensure your practice’s needs are continually met
Finding the right EMR and practice management solutions for your specialty practice is actually quite simple when you know what to look for in a software vendor and what the exact demands of your field require.
Declining software upgrades, or keeping outdated systems in-place, can lead to some of the common failures that plague specialty practices every year. Finding practical and efficient systems has never been more important than it is today, especially with regard to the upcoming transition from ICD-9 and ICD-10 and an ever-evolving healthcare industry.
Avoiding unnecessary mistakes doesn’t have to be rocket science, but it does require implementing optimal, compliant and functional tools. Whether you’re seeking to implement quality data solutions for Meaningful Use (or other incentive-based payment programs), or to ease the coming transition to ICD-10, a lot of issues stem from the effectiveness of the software you choose to use in your practice.
If you have concerns over the way your practice handles any of its EMR or practice management processes, you should look into how you can optimize your workflow by upgrading or changing your solutions. Choosing the right software vendor can help you meet optimization needs and improve your bottom line as a specialty practice.
