In her 25 years of career as a chiropractor, Jonnah Wayne, DC, a New York-based owner of a chiropractic clinic, has seen her share of chaos in the waiting room. Helping parents fill out intake forms while providing chiropractic care to patients is, of course, a challenge for her, but she recently started using zHealth’s digital patient intake technology. And, everything changed since then.
Earlier, for Dr. Jonnah’s chiropractic practice, the intake process used to start once the patients reached her practice for their appointment. Dr. Jonnah and her staff helped patients complete their intake forms and sign consents. The staff then manually entered the information from the forms into the EHR. The forms completed by the patients were scanned and kept in storage as per the practice’s policies. And, the challenges Dr. Jonnah faced?
- Longer wait times
- Staff burnout
- Rising costs due to paper usage
- Operational inefficiencies
Many chiropractic clinics that are using manual intake paperwork face similar challenges. Patient intake is a critical aspect of running a chiropractic practice. You need the patient’s demographic information, contact information, payment details, insurance information, and not to mention other key family and social history. However, using manual patient intake paperwork can negatively affect the patient experience and your practice performance.
A study found that 79% of patients are more likely to select a provider who offers patient communication tools to aid interactions. In fact, 50% would change from their current provider to one that uses better technology tools.
57% of patients say other industries are better than healthcare at providing digital and personalized experiences across channels. The streamlined automation of other service sectors like retail, travel, and banking can be applied to the chiropractic services industry with patient engagement technologies like digital intake. Communication tools for patients like digital patient intake solution will not only help you improve your patient experience but also get up to speed with the digital age.
Challenges of Manual Patient Intake
Patient intake relies heavily on paper and pen. There’s a ton of paperwork, and it’s easy to make mistakes. This old-school way of doing things can slow everything down and cause mix-ups in the information. With 3% of a practice’s annual revenue spent on paper, the traditional intake process is quite expensive. But, if you automate patient intake forms, we can make things way easier for everyone—patients and staff alike.
Why Should You Switch to Digital Patient Intake Forms?
- To ensure a positive patient experience
Automate patient intake process to give your patients the technology they want from you. 93% of consumers say they expect practices to use digital patient experience tools when interacting with them, including the intake process.
Digital patient intake solutions enhance the patient experience by:
- Offering flexible check-in options such as remote mobile intake from home and at-facility self-service options.
- Automating the information flow from the intake software to SOAP notes, thus eliminating redundant data entry.
- Presenting only appointment-related forms, questions, and concept forms to the patients.
- Allowing patients to complete the forms on any device, reducing potential waiting room time.
Check out this video to learn how zHealth’s digital intake solution helped Infinite Life Chiropractic to improve patient intake process.
2.To enhance your staff productivity
Excessive administrative work and manual data entry into EHR result in staff burnout, which can ultimately result in reduced productivity. With digital patient experience tools in place, your staff’s jobs become easier and less tedious. They will have more time to interact with patients.
Having patient intake management software allows your patients to complete their intake forms online from their mobile devices. They can fill out their personal, health, and insurance information electronically at their own convenience, after which their data will sync immediately with your chiropractic software, freeing staff from manual data entry.
Your staff will no longer have to copy information from paper to different systems constantly, eliminating the probability of human errors and data inaccuracies. When your staff will be freed from such manual efforts, they can focus on patient-centric duties. Automated patient intake solutions will return valuable time back to your team.
3. To provide a contactless, friction-free experience
What if a chiropractor’s visit could be as seamless and contactless as an Amazon Go experience? That’s what your patients expect – digital patient experience – especially after the global coronavirus pandemic.
Now imagine this:
- To book an appointment, your patient visits your website/social media channels and clicks on the “book an appointment” link.
- As soon as the patient books an appointment, he gets a confirmation email with a link to complete intake forms.
- The patient completes the pre-visit intake forms at home from his personal device.
- When he arrives at the doctor’s office, he can quickly self-check in using the front desk kiosk, and then wait in his car.
- He gets real-time alerts about wait time estimates. When it’s their turn to see the doctor, he receives a text message or notification and heads straight to the right exam room.
- After the visit, the patient can pay for the appointment online and schedule a follow-up visit, all through his personal device.
This is what a contactless, digital patient experience looks like! Digital intake solution is a part of the entire contactless patient journey. It’s time for your practice to adopt a contactless patient experience for three reasons:
- Minimizing contact with others will help patients and staff feel more comfortable.
- Patient workflows will be consistent across care delivery mechanisms.
- Convenience will attract new patients and keep existing patients loyal.
Read this blog to learn what a Contactless Patient Experience Journey looks like.
4. To ensure patient data protection
Do you know? More than 41 million patient records were exposed by 572 security incidents in 2019 alone. With strict Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy laws, it’s crucial to protect your patient data now more than ever before.
Digitizing your intake forms and reminders with patient communication tools will help you stay compliant with HIPAA laws while protecting patient privacy. zHealth’s patient communication tools include digital intake solution. zHealth is built with advanced, built-in security protection that offers you and your patients peace of mind and minimizes the risk of losing confidential data.
5. To decrease overhead expenses
Inefficient, paper-based intake processes can significantly increase overhead expenses for chiropractic practice. It has been found that at least 3 percent of the annual practice revenue is spent on paper. With a digital intake solution, you could decrease your practice’s overhead costs associated with patient intake paperwork. Switching to patient intake management software could save your practice from wasting valuable time, money, and resources.
6. To boost practice efficiency
Oftentimes it is the processes, not the people, that present the biggest challenges to quality care. In fact, 78% of healthcare quality experts agree that improved clinical workflows and efficiency are the keys to improving quality. Smart patient experience software solutions like digital intake forms can streamline your practice workflows and help you deliver more efficient care. How?
- Patient intake software can save anywhere from 6-12 minutes of staff time per patient visit. So, your staff can spend more time interacting with patients or answering questions from patients in the waiting room.
- 61% of claim denials are caused due to simple demographics or technical errors. Allowing patients to enter their own insurance details during the digital intake process reduces the amount of time spent dealing with errors in insurance and claim denials.
- A premium intake solution is workflow-configured. It updates patient data directly to a clinic’s electronic health record (EHR) and chiropractic practice management software, ensuring interoperability between systems. Automated data capture also ensures data accuracy.
- From the front desk staff, chiropractic assistants to providers, everyone can access necessary patient data without time-consuming hand-offs.
7. Increase patient collections
Did you know that 61% of patients might change doctors for a better payment experience? Since patients cover 30% of healthcare costs, it makes sense to improve patient intake process with technology.
An automated patient intake platform uses digital payment tools to quickly collect co-pays and balances. You can use zHealth Pay to save card details on patient files, collect online payments, and swipe card using payment terminal. Plus, you can collect payments at any time—before or after the service—creating a better digital patient journey.
Conclusion
By implementing digital patient intake, you can streamline and automate patient intake data capture, eliminate waiting room backlogs, cut unnecessary overhead costs, reduce staff burnout, and improve the patient experience. zHealth’s communication tools for patients including Patient Intake Solution are integrated with chiropractic practice management software. zHealth software streamlines the entire patient check-in process, addressing your common challenges and providing numerous benefits for your practice. With zHealth’s Digital Patient Intake Software, your patients will enjoy a convenient, mobile-friendly way to access your services while enabling your practice to deliver a better, more modern patient experience.
To learn more about digital intake and how it can benefit your patients, staff, and practice, click here.
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