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0 Automating the patient intake process in healthcare includes various tasks ranging from collecting relevant information on new and returning patients before their appointment. The patient information may include demographics, clinical records, insurance details, billings, consent forms, prescriptions, IDs, and other necessary screening reports.
The process involved in Manual Patient Intake
Conventionally, healthcare professionals follow various paperwork to collect relevant patient information during intake. When the patient reaches the clinic, the staff gets busy with the patient intake process, relying heavily on pen and paper. Due to the time-consuming nature of this process, the patient must wait several hours while they’re asked to fill out countless intake and consent forms.
After the forms are submitted, the staff verifies each manually after reviewing the patient information, including the eligibility, which involves calling the insurance payor. Once verified, the staff digitizes the patient information by manually entering them into the EHR. These forms are scanned and indexed for digital records, while the paper copies are stored and archived later.
Challenges of Manual Patient Intake
While the traditional way of doing things has been in practice for decades, these challenges take time, causing the business to succumb to pressure.
- Waiting Period: Records show that 30% of the patients leave a doctor’s appointment due to more extended waiting periods.
- Burden on Staff: Too much paperwork can burn out the staff with repetitive administrative tasks. With the number of patients physicians consult daily, the amount of paperwork that falls on the medical administrators is humungous.
- Inaccurate data: Manual processes are error-prone, and the risk of data duplication is high.
- High Costs: There is a relatively high investment in paper-based storage and workforce.
Time to switch: Patient Intake Automation
Automating the patient intake workflow process will help approach the challenges posed by the traditional method. It will also help deliver greater efficiency and better financial returns.
- Improve patient experience: In the modern-day scenario, we’re used to the digital experience of accessing anything at our convenience. With the help of AI, healthcare can now provide digital accessibility to patients, allowing them to use the service providers’ portals to make their appointments and schedules. Studies show that 93% of consumers prefer digital experience, including the patient intake process.
- Enhance Staff Productivity: Patient Service Automation can reduce the time invested by the medical administrators in clerical work such as prepping intake forms, scanning patient-filled documents, and other time-consuming duties to manage the workflow. Automation can drastically minimize manual efforts and promise high accuracy.
- Improve Operational Efficiency: With the manual process, the staff will have to update and duplicate patient information after checking every record. The probability of inaccuracies is too high. Automating the legwork can relieve the administrative burden off their shoulders and allow the staff to invest in patient care.
- Enhance Cash Flow: Surveys show that 61% of patients change facilities just to be offered a better payment experience. Patient Intake Automation can provide a streamlined platform that allows co-pays and maintaining balances through digital payment tools. Healthcare practitioners can collect their payments from various payment gateways, including websites and credit/debit cards. Automated systems provide the advantage of collecting payments anytime in the patient’s journey with the healthcare provider, before or after the service.
- Building Relationships: While traditional phone calls from staff to patients can be engaging, they are very time-consuming, considering the large volume of patient queries recorded frequently, and patients prefer to ignore calls from unknown numbers. Keeping these inaccuracies in mind, patient intake automation can effectively leverage digital channels such as broadcast messaging to promote timely information on a large scale. Other communication tools for automating appointment scheduling and setting up payment reminders can minimize patient no-shows and enhance the cash flow.
Key Takeaways: Patient Intake Automation
- Streamlines administrative tasks
- Improves patient experience and increases referrals.
- Enhances data accuracy by reducing manual errors.
- Ensures HIPAA compliance by securing PHI.
- Cost Reduction and low processing time.
- Integration with EHR systems.
- Digital experience for patients.
- Scalable for large healthcare organizations.
Wrapping Up
Patient Intake Automation is transforming the nature of healthcare practice, and it is no longer a luxury but a requirement. Automation can improve business efficiency and patient satisfaction by simplifying the complex tasks involved in the onboarding process. These advanced technologies are developed carefully to focus on delivering quality care and complying with all the HIPAA regulations. At Droidal, our automation experts can help you streamline your business with cutting-edge solutions that can optimize your operations to meet the never-ending demands in the healthcare industry.
