The Doctors Answer

More Time, More Patients, More Income? [Step 3 out of 3]

Written by Benjamin Pure | Jan 2, 2019 1:31:59 PM

Here's How to Do It in 3 Easy Steps When Running a Solo Practice

‘Eliminate-Delegate-Automate’ - this simple rule that is applicable to all businesses can be also used by individual doctors running their solo practices.
In previous parts, we analyzed the benefits of task elimination and effective delegation. Today, we are exploring the rule number three, automation.

 Being a solo practitioner does not mean you can lag behind large healthcare providers with the digital technology. Quite the opposite, take advantage of modern software to:

Improve your electronic health record efficiency.

Although a great majority of physicians use EHR, only a small proportion know how to do it efficiently. Thanks to an EHR system, you will be able to store your patients’ data in a single place, track the state of their health across time, and access it within seconds. Implementing such software will let you get rid of time-consuming paperwork and ensure records consistency.

To make the most of the system and enhance your effectiveness, get familiar with shortcuts and work on increasing your typing speed. Build templates that can be reused across multiple patients. Gain faster access to medical records by logging in with face recognition or fingerprint instead of a password. Research features and add-ons to make sure you take the maximum advantage of the product. If you are not tech-savvy, consult the vendor and ask for support or a training session.

Accelerate note-taking with speech recognition tools.

You don’t need to postpone capturing your patient’s story until after the visit. Thanks to modern speech recognition and note-taking tools, you may dictate it as you examine the patient and amend the notes at your convenience.

Note-taking tools not only save your time but also provide for much more thorough notes, as everything you say is taken down verbatim. Every detail of your patient’s examination will be meticulously recorded. A reliable software should be easily integrated with your EHR tool so that there’s no need to upload audio files to the system manually.

Streamline prescription renewal.

Electronic prescribing allows you to generate and send prescription orders directly to a pharmacy via electronic means. It improves prescription accuracy through the elimination of errors resulting from illegible handwriting. E-prescriptions also save you time as you don’t need to input the same data every time a patient visits your practice.

That is a significant shift in the patient-doctor communication, which allows you to spend more time talking to your patient instead of wasting it to fill out paperwork. What’s more, electronic prescribing solutions send the prescription information to pharmacies before the patient arrives, thus contributing to the decrease of wait times.

Towards Patient’s Success

As a solo practitioner, you concentrate your efforts on providing high-touch services to your patients and expediting patient interaction with your facility. While there will always be some tasks that you will have to conduct on your own, applying simple time management techniques can make a great difference to your practice.

By outsourcing some activities to experienced external providers and investing in smart e-health solutions, you can save time, admit more patients, maintain their trust, and bring greater revenue to your business.

Questions?

Why not take advantage of these steps today? A specialist medical answering service will help you reduce operational costs, enhance your patients’ experience, and gain more valuable time.

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