Nextech Named 2024 Best in KLAS: Ambulatory Specialty EHR

«  View All Posts

3 MIN READ.

Your Practice Can Be SCARY Fast

By: Shannon Woodworth | October 31st, 2018

Your Practice Can Be SCARY Fast Blog Feature

Long waits, inefficient care episodes and distracted doctors can make your patients feel like they’re living a nightmare. There’s no better time than Halloween to get rid of any process skeletons and explore a few tricks and treats for strengthening performance. Here are some key ways that technology can ensure your practice is ready to handle whatever ghosts and goblins come your way.

Carve away wait times by smoothing the patient experience.

Practices that offer an online portal can enhance communication before and after the patient encounter. Using the technology, patients can schedule appointments, complete any necessary forms and even pay co-pays prior to their visit. Reminders sent through the portal can minimize missed appointments, which can hijack staff time. Patients can also send secure emails to their physicians with any questions and refill requests, limiting the amount of time that front desk staff must spend fielding these calls. When taken together, these efficiencies can shrink the time between patient arrival and seeing the physician. Not only does this improve patient satisfaction, but it allows the practice to see more patients.

Treat yourself to efficient room use.

When practices leverage room management technology, they can quickly see where patients are along the care episode. An easy-to-navigate dashboard lets staff see at-a-glance what rooms are in use and by whom. So, if there is a patient receiving an x-ray, another waiting for a procedure and a room open, staff can bring in a new patient to wait in the available room. As soon as the x-ray becomes available, they can move the next patient in. This ensures patients aren’t waiting too long, and it can also optimize space use because staff can swiftly shepherd patients to the next part of their treatment without having to manually check on room status.

Chart like magic.

Traditional electronic medical records (EMRs) can be somewhat clunky in their user interfaces, requiring clinicians to toggle between screens to comprehensively document the patient encounter. This can result in physicians being distracted during the patient appointment as they try to fill in all the necessary fields. By using solutions that employ predictive charting and other assistive technology, physicians can customize screens to match their workflow and be sure that the right information is at their fingertips. This speeds documentation while preserving accuracy. It also frees physicians to spend more time with patients, which can help with patient care as well as efficiency, and creates the perfect spell for staff and patient satisfaction.

Don’t be haunted by poor performance.

Practices shouldn’t be spooked by the idea of improving their operations. By using the above mentioned technology, a practice can go a long way in streamlining processes, driving satisfaction and meeting the challenges of today’s healthcare environment without being spooked.