When it comes to registration and check-in at your practice, bottleneck is possible. Depending on the processes you have in place, this may even be a frequent occurrence. Bottleneck during the start of a patient visit causes wait times while patients fill out information (just like they did the time before), use germy pens used by previous patients (yuck!), and wait for your front desk staff to complete piles of entry work before a patient is called back for an exam. Breaking the patient intake bottleneck is crucial for your practice… and technology tools, like eRegistration, can help.
What is eRegistration?
Simply speaking, eRegistration refers to electronic registration. In healthcare, practices utilize these systems to allow patients to review documents, sign forms, update medical/family history, submit current medications, send insurance coverage, and more. Some eRegistration systems include digital check-ins as well in order to notify the office that they are waiting to be seen. This creates a “virtual waiting room” for your medical practice. eRegistration changes the overall patient flow of your practice due to eliminating the bottleneck of patients at your front office. With this solution, patients are able to check-in and register for an appointment with their own device.
How does eRegistration aid in breaking the patient intake bottleneck?
Patient intake bottleneck produces many undesirable outcomes for your practices. Bottleneck may lead to loss of patients at your practice, denials, an abundance of manual entry work and more. Let’s dive into some specifics…
Increases in Patient Satisfaction
Would it surprise you to learn that, on average, 97% of patients are frustrated by excruciatingly long wait times at practices? Patient intake bottleneck creates this wait time issue which means practices have a lot of room for improvement. Patients waste 20 minutes in a waiting room filling out paper work that they could have completed prior to a visit when an eRegistration tool is unavailable. Enabling this solution provides a seamless office visit that often improves patient satisfaction and reduces manual data entry for your front desk staff.
Reduce Denials
When your practice receives incomplete or inaccurate information throughout the registration process, it complicates the reimbursement process and can lead to denials. This hurts your bottom line and inhibits your practice’s ability to get paid. It also goes without saying that it adds extra work to your practice’s plate. Medical claim denials are time-intensive and require staff resources to resolve properly. Electronic registration provides your office with the resource of time. Time enables your practice to verify insurance coverage and prior authorizations before a patient arrives at your practice for an appointment. This allows your staff to identify any missing patient information and gather the necessary data before a claim is sent and potentially denied.
Improve Practice Processes
As your practice moves towards a more digitally streamlined registration, your staff will reap the benefits of automation tools. This means less manual entry work for them and more reconciliation of data in a patient’s chart. As these manual practice processes are removed from staff’s task lists, focus shifts to patient facing duties that hold a greater impact on the overall patient experience.
Enhance Patient Privacy Initiatives
eRegistration tools typically integrate with a practice’s practice management or electronic medical record system. This improves patient safety which means paper charts aren’t readily available in the office. These systems allow patients to fill out their information on their own devices, whether that be a smart phone, computer, or tablet. This offers better privacy to them than being forced to complete forms on a clipboard in a waiting room of an office.
CHADIS Pre-visit Questionnaire Solution provides all of these benefits to your practice and more. This solution is soon to be directly integrated into MicroMD PM and EMR to allow your practice to reconcile data received from the patient during the registration process to eliminate excess data entry. Arm your practice with the power to streamline processes for a simple, real-time, and quick registration and check-in process.
Are you ready throw the paper out and bring digital processes in with a patient intake solution? Call us today to learn more about CHADIS Pre-visit Questionnaire Solution at 800.624.8832 or visit us at micromd.com/marketplace/.
About the author,
Savanna Adams
Savanna is the Marketing Communication Specialist at MicroMD. She schedules emails to clients, prospects, and VARs, manages social media accounts, performs research, writes blogs and eBooks, and much more while helping to support the simple yet powerful MicroMD solutions.
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