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How to Use EHR for Increased Efficiency and Productivity

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As an OD, you must be familiar with Electronic Health Records (EHR). These allow you to maintain an updated digital record of all your patients. They include everything from family history, diagnosis, and treatments to prescribed medications and lab test reports.

However, EHRs are good for more than just holding patient information and providing secure access to authorized users. They can be utilized to improve the quality of patient care and increase your net profit.

Here are some benefits of electronic health records:

· Increased Practice Efficiency

· Cost Savings

· Less Paperwork

· Better Patient Care

· Increased Patient Involvement

Let’s take a look at how you can use EHRs more efficiently to improve the quality of care and increase productivity.

Creating Effective Marketing Strategies Using Patient Data

You can study electronic health records to measure multiple metrics using data mining techniques and find patterns in your patient data to improve your practice and increase your chances of success. You can figure out how many of your patients are interested in buying eye-wear from you by looking at the patient data alone.

You can also see if using new technology in your private practice will benefit you in the long run and how the cost would affect your return on investment. By analyzing how many of your patients have vision plans or medical plans, you can create effective marketing strategies to increase your patient intake.

Another great thing about EHRs is that you can check the number of transactions made by all your patients and use that to identify trends and formulate strategies to improve patient care. This will allow you to strengthen your relationship with your patients and keep them coming back to you.

Improving Practice Efficiency

To improve your practice efficiency, you need to make sure that all your staff members are trained to use electronic health records. When a patient calls to schedule an appointment, the

person operating your front desk should know how to review the patient’s digital record and suggest a suitable time slot.

EHR systems are getting more and more advanced now and can be integrated with pre-test equipment. This means that your staff won’t have to enter the patient data because it will be added to the system automatically. You can review patient records whenever you need to and add information about old exams to newer patient records as well.

Final Words

Electronic health records simplify time-consuming procedures and streamline your core processes. You can invest in a cloud-based EHR solution to make things easier for your IT department.

EHRs also come with templates that can be used to complete routine tasks more easily with just a few clicks and keystrokes. You can even let your patients enter their own information by setting up your system with a patient portal.

Now that you’ve learned how to use EHRs more efficiently, there’s nothing stopping you from improving your quality of care and providing an enhanced experience to all your patients.

Big Data in Corporate Optometry

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Big Data is a term used to describe huge data sets that may be used to reveal patterns through computational analysis. There is an abundant amount of health data that is now available to many corporate opticals. The data can come from multiple sources like vision care plans, labs, medical devices, recall systems, ehr systems, surveys, nps scores, foot traffic and customer purchases. That is just the tip of the iceberg! Whether it is structured data or unstructured, it is surveyed by business organizations to improve their decision-making process.

Big Data Applications in Corporate Optometry

Healthy Patients

Treating patients and keeping them healthy is always the top-most priority of healthcare providers. Through Big Data, they can keep track of patients’ physical activity and receive reports on particular issues related to their health. There are contact lenses out there at can monitor inter-ocular pressures and blood sugar. Even though there still needs more research, if practitioners had this data it could really revolutionize patient outcomes. The information about the number of glaucoma suspects or diabetics can be valuable to insurance companies, contact lens companies and corporate opticals as this information can guide them to certain patient populations and expand the business for new products to sell in their opticals.

Expansion of Services

Various applications use Big Data to collect information and then use that data to advise individuals on their medical conditions and optical needs. Many times some applications that are used within the organization can also be used to marketing purposes. Based on the input to the application, patients are notified that new products, services and sale of products. Many managed care plans have the patient data from the eyeglass rx to the contact lens. Patients can be notified of more affordable convenient products through their online stores and brick and mortar locations. They are able to take the data from the managed care plans and strategically open locations and compete with other offices based on the information that they have from their labs and data of diagnoses. They could use the data of patient diagnosis to enhance their practices with technology to attract and retain those patients. The data can be also for routine eye exams to encourage those patients to seek telemedicine services. We recently saw VSP looking to acquire Visionworks. There is a lot of data that these two entities can share to grow the business. VSP Ventures is open new locations as well. They have the data to know where certain areas are under served, over priced or even over saturated in competition. Same can be said about CVS purchasing Aetna and the Essilor Luxottica merger.

Reduction of Remakes

Prescriptions errors are a major cost to many corporate opticals. If a corporate optical had information to reduce to detect an issue than it would save costs. Many times there are technologies in place and education for staff members to reduce that. The tool uses Big Data to detect errors before they occur.

Cost Reduction

Through Big Data, a patient can order a different style frame with the same measurements with reduced cost of a brick and mortar location. If a company as access to data of typical Rxs and average pds than it will be easier to design a lens or frame that the average population might have. Being able to take that data and create products direct to consumers is very appealing to corporate opticals. The guesswork is eliminated and so is the cost involved in them. Many corporate opticals have their own online stores to appeal to the online consumer.

Challenges in Implementing Big Data in Healthcare

Assembling the Data

The data that is needed to implement Big Data in corporate optometry is not always present in one place. Mostly it comes from numerous sources. A big load of information is to be gathered and verified. How the data is interpreted has many variables.

Policies and Procedures

After the data has been verified and validated, policies and procedures are to be followed. This becomes a complex task as the HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) needs to be taken into consideration. National standards have been established by the HIPAA to safeguard medical information of individuals.

Management Issues

To implement Big Data in corporate optometry, everyone needs to be informed. It is extremely difficult to manage such sensitive and confidential information.

The Bright Future for Big Data in Healthcare

The technology of Big Data is being used by a wide range of sectors but healthcare is a domain where it can bring a huge difference in. Although Big Data in healthcare is still in its developmental stages, health outcomes and controlling costs are believed to be improved by using this amazing technology. With healthcare Big Data it can be possible to keep track of a large amount of data and easily convert it to get productive insights.

Is Your Head in the Clouds? Well Your Practice Should be in “The Cloud”!

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Is Your Head in the Clouds? Well Your Practice Should be in “The Cloud”!

 

How cloud-based EHR & automated practice management will transform your office, save you time, and money.

 

By Adam Stelzer, O.D.

 

If you want to become a better optometrist, you should be using an EHR/practice management system in an effort to streamline your practice and optimize patient care. However, the key is getting the right system because you may risk setting yourself up for extra work, lost data, and even compromising patient information.

 

For years, optometrists have dealt with these frustrations. That’s why it is important to find an EHR/practice management system that is built by developers who understand the direct needs of their fellow colleagues. For optometry, there are solutions available that were built by optometrists, specifically for optometry. These solutions are better formatted for the flow of an eye exam, with short cuts to simplify common norms and medical reference databases, as well as auto-fills to quickly complete common procedures, impressions, and plans. There are even systems that integrate with labs, so you can order contact trials during an exam with the click of one button. You can trust that optometrists have a first-hand understanding about what tools would help streamline an eye exam and allow attention to be given to the patient, rather than data entry.

 

With such rapid advances in technology, we can all see that “the cloud” is extremely useful today and will be indispensable in the future. Soon enough, we’ll find that it will be utilized in every facet of life for securely warehousing all of our data.

 

A major benefit to a cloud-based system is that you greatly reduce the security risk that a local server system inherently has; where information can be stolen, damaged, or corrupted by it’s need for physical storage space. With a high quality cloud-based EHR/practice management system, your information is encrypted, so it cannot be stolen or compromised. It is virtually backed up, so the risk of losing data is greatly reduced. It is also accessible instantaneously from any location in the world. This allows the doctor to complete charts or access reports at any time. Your system needs to be fully secured and HIPPA-compliant.

 

The cloud doesn’t limit you to a room in your office, where you likely have limited storage capacity. Even if you previously saw a patient and charted their exam on paper, you should be able to scan and upload those charts into a cloud-based system. In a system with unlimited storage capacity they’ll be stored within that patient’s profile indefinitely. All of your past and current patients’ records are available to you conveniently within one system, even if they are at a different office location within your practice group. This eliminates the need for paper, boxes, storage, and makes it so much quicker to access.

 

Patients are now looking for health care providers that give them easier access to scheduling appointments online, getting appointment reminders via text messaging, the ability to complete paperwork in advance (eliminating time in the waiting area), as well as the ability to access their data online, and at any time. A modern system can offer a unique link to an online scheduling feature, with the ability to customize available appointment time slots and intervals between appointments, and integrate directly into your office schedule. Some cloud-based EHR/practice management systems can give patients access to a private portal where they can fill out their paperwork and medical history, which can significantly reduce patient check-in times. The patient can even access their prescriptions, invoices, and referrals after their appointment through their portal. This feature gives you and your staff back invaluable time to focus on more important things, such as patient care.

 

One of the biggest cost and time savings is from an integrated patient text messaging feature. You should look for a system that is fully comprehensive, so you can eliminate the high-cost third-party SMS services. With that feature included, it’s as if you’re hiring another staff member to do all of your patient recalls, but at no additional cost. You’ll want to find a system that gives you unlimited text messaging and two-way patient communication that can be done right from within the system. A great system will allow you to maintain and keep unique communication contacts and securely e-Fax them from within the system. This allows you to easily manage your patient information sharing; with pharmacies via e-Prescribing, other health-care professionals via patient referrals, with labs for optical material orders, and with third-party payers and clearinghouses for billing. Communication should be simple and automatically recorded under the patient’s profile.

 

Another major benefit to an EHR/practice management system is the ability to track analytics and generate reports. It is important to consider the analytics feature of a system not just as an “extra”, but as a powerful and necessary tool to help you track the statistics about your practice. These reports can show you the growth of your practice, in number of patients and sales volume, and even help target specific markets, products, or clients. You can also use the reporting to correct mismanagement and check the performance of staff, or even certain inventory items and products. It’s important to get daily summary reports, and a good system will allow you to create customized reports when you want them.

 

If you are not using a cloud-based EMR/practice management system, you need to reconsider your reasoning for not jumping on board. There are systems that are robust, completely customizable, and inclusive of all of the aforementioned must-haves, for as low as $99 per month. Explore your options, and be sure to recognize when a system is over-priced. Many times, you’re just paying for the markup and hidden fees of outdated systems, where those unnecessary costs are pushed onto you, the practice owner. There are great systems that offer new state-of–the-art platform designs with no contracts, no sign-up fees, no charges for updates. A select few will even give you and your staff training, as well as directly assist you in getting your data transferred from another system, at no additional charge. Take the few minutes to do a free demonstration to see how a system can fit your needs. With the right EHR/practice management solution, you can trust that you’ll find yourself less stressed with a more streamlined and efficient optometry practice – at least, it did for me!

 
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