A hospital or medical office might be state of the art—until a patient walks in the door and is handed a clipboard full of paper forms to fill out, which then must be manually keyed in, costing precious time, and possibly resulting in serious errors. The dotted line affects your bottom line, and the following demonstrates how your healthcare business can take those final steps into the paperless future.
Struggling Along the Paper Trail
Time is money and never has this concept been more applicable than in today’s fast-paced world. Any technology is only as fast as its slowest point, and paper forms, contracts, and documents are the quicksand that bogs down your entire way of providing care and doing business. However, time is not the only issue with those stacks of paperwork. The following are some of the issues involved with the collection and processing of paper.
- Slow – In a medical office, there’s a waiting room full of patients filling out clipboards full of forms, which then must be manually keyed in, with the backlog growing throughout the day. During clinical trials, consent and result forms must be mailed or faxed, then resent if any information is missing. Days of waiting can easily turn into weeks or months trying to track down everyone and get their signatures.
- Expensive – It’s estimated that every piece of paper costs an average of $6.50 to process. Then there is the cost of mailing, especially for overnight services. Many man hours are needed to handle the printing, distribution, collection, processing, and storage of all those papers, and extra staff may be required to handle the backlog.
- Compliance Risks – Failure to comply with HIPAA regulations can be extremely costly. With mountains of paperwork being generated every year, complete patient privacy and 100% compliance becomes less and less likely. When you prepare your clinical trial for that final review, can you be certain all of the FDA regulations have been addressed somewhere in those piles of papers?
Paperless is the Future of Healthcare
Can you imagine a medical office that starts the day with all of their patients’ accurate medical histories, and signed consent forms already updated and in their systems?
What if patients had the ability to fill out and sign all of the required paperwork on their home computer or handheld device before arriving for their appointments?
What if physicians and staff could also enter all findings and test results, and authorize recommended treatments, prescriptions, and procedures? How would patients and staff benefit?
Imagine, the paperless office helping the environment and your bottom line at the same time, thanks to the innovation of electronic signatures.
- Fast and Efficient – Staff could immediately check in both existing and new patients with accurate information. Immediately after, patient follow up actions can commence, insurance claims can be filed, and billing initiated. During clinical trials, what once took weeks or months waiting for signatures and results, could now only take days or even just hours.
- Compliant and Safe – Multiple levels of verification and encryption protect Personal Health Information (PHI) for complete privacy and HIPAA compliance for medical offices and their patients. KOL event data, sampling, and clinical trial information is verified at the point of entry, so when trials are complete, there won’t be any surprises with lost documents, empty fields, or missing signatures. Documents are 100% in good order.
Contact us today for more information.
