Benefits of Using Online Patient Intake Software
Patients form the core of the medical industry. Caring for humans has been an ancient trade and has been followed ever since the dawn of humanity. This care via hospitals and medical facilities had naturally been more effective and is common than ever now.
Furthermore, medical aid is now easily available to everyone where every other individual, regardless of where they stay, can get in touch with a hospital, clinic or medical practice nearby without any hassles.
Patients nowadays suffer from a wide variety of physical and mental illnesses for which they step into these medical facilities. The larger and scarcer hospitals and nursing homes have now hugely taken the form of the medical practices, which are integrated with all the facilities that mimic their bigger counterparts, including doctors, nurses, reception area, billing area, and an array of medical office tools and medical instruments.
Furthermore, these patient practices are also implementing cutting-edge medical office software and systems to boost the overall care provided to today's patients. At least most of these practices are trying to do so to keep up with the competition that is live in the medical industry of today.
Why Patient Intake is Crucial to a Medical Practice?
Patients rush down to the nearest medical practice whenever they are in need. However, it is also important that the practices are equipped with the latest software and systems to extend the utmost care possible to be offered to the patients.
Right from the booking of patient appointments to the patient intake, check-in, followed by the doctor visit, and the exit of the patients, the whole journey matters. Also, it is important to note that the journey of an individual patient does not end with his/her leaving the clinic because following up is almost as important as the initial intake.
Proper follow-up of the patients leads to many benefits including but not limited to the growth of patient experience, patient satisfaction, increase in revenues and the retention rate, and more.
Advanced equipment and diagnoses are surely a part of the healthcare industry, which are empowering the patients and practices. Besides, with the introduction of digital software and patient intake software, the healthcare units and practices are seeing a transformation along with a boost in their revenues.
The global healthcare IT market, which was worth $326.1 billion in 2021 is estimated to reach $821.1 billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 20.3% during the forecast period. Therefore, the potential of the new-age technologies is huge indeed!
Medical office software, patient management, and practice management systems are bringing in a significant change from the earlier care provided to the patient first treatments and practices. Here, along with all other tools, patient intake software is seeming to be quite indispensable.
Now, if you are wondering what is the patient intake? Then, here we are referring to the process that helps the healthcare organizations and practices to collect demographic data, social and clinical data, data associated with the insurance, payments, filling up consent forms, and other essential pieces of information from the fresh and returning patients before their visit. Such pieces of information form an instrumental part of the diagnosis process and are thus, primary to be recorded in case of any individual as a patient in every visit.
The patient intake process has long been dubbed as a lengthy and complicated process but that notion is changing somehow with the emergence of advanced tools, paperless patient intake forms, and online patient intake software.
Furthermore, the HIPAA guidelines that regulate the patient intake methods in the practices working under a federal government further add to the worries of the practices. However, with the help of the medical office software providers like GrowPractice, which bring in HIPAA-compliant, fast, secure, and effective software, practices can duly manage their patient intake process and even wield them as their strength.
A properly conducted patient intake process can help the practices in ways more than one. Yes, we will also get to that part but before that let's check out why the practices need to give attention to their patient intake process. Here's why:
Patient intake is the right in the initial phase of a patient's journey
Yes, you have read it right. The patient intake includes the collection of the basic information of the patients and is right at the first phase of the patient's journey, which makes it doubly crucial. This is because the patient intake process often results in shaping the patient's first impression of how the practice or the medical facility is.
The process is fraught with forgery
In any industry, there are good companies and bad ones, while some others turn out to be frauds. Yes, this latter category of companies and businesses is a major problem. Patient information is sensitive and is guarded by many regulatory bodies and by HIPAA. Therefore, it is essential for a medical practice to follow all the guidelines declared by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.
They are the cause of unnecessary wait times
No one likes to wait and it is more so when it comes to the patients. The patients are paying to visit their preferable doctors. Therefore, it is quite natural that they won't like it if they are being waited upon. Nearly 30% of the patients have already walked out of the practices due to longer wait times, statistics say. The worst part is that these patients would never come back. You sure don't want your practice to be counted as one of them.
Patient intake process highly influences patient experience
The patient intake process, as it deals with sensitive, personal information of the patients, also highly influences the patient experiences.
It also influences patient retention
Patient retention relies on the overall service that they get from the medical practices. The patients' experiences are composed of all the different factors like the patient intake, workflow, diagnosis, total wait time, credibility, follow-ups, and more. Here, patient intake also plays a great role in influencing the experiences of the patients, thereby directly affecting the chances of patient retention
Improving Patient Intake Management Software to Enhance Patient Intake and Boost Practice Revenues!
Being a process that has an ongoing reputation of being time-taking and rather uninteresting, patient intake is tough to manage when there is a rush. Furthermore, the intake process of practices has also been infamous as one that yields to pressure. Here's where the patient intake management software from GrowPractice brings about a change
Powered by the prompt patient intake process implementing the digital patient intake forms that GrowPractice offers, the medical units now can handle more patients than ever. Therefore, improving your patient intake management software or implementing online patient intake software would greatly improve the productivity of your practice for good!
Here's a list of other benefits that GrowPractice brings in with its advanced patient intake software and systems:
Paperless patient intake forms
Going paperless is the drive of the age we live in and why not? You would be shocked to learn that nearly 1 billion trees worth of paper is thrown away in the US every year. Reports further confirm that America uses roughly 85,000,000 tons of paper per year, which means it is around 680 pounds of paper that each person uses.
It is true that the medical industry is a significant contributor of the same because the processes that make up the industry more or less need to be documented in every other step but that doesn't mean that the processes would be dependent on paper. Paperless should be the new norm, which is why GrowPractice focuses on the same. Starting from the paperless intake process to further onwards, GrowPractice's methods are all eco-friendly, requiring the least of paper.
Fast and effective process
Online onboarding of patients is definitely helpful and has already started changing the patient's onboarding process forever, and so is the online patient intake software. Besides, around 59% of the Gen Y patients have revealed that they would like to go for the doctors or the practices that are equipped with online processes. This indicates the need for the online method of patient intake at once. The online patient intake needs less time and is efficient, thereby greatly influencing the patient experience.
No restrictions of time or place
While going through the recent statistical data on patient appointment bookings we have discovered that more than 35% of the patients like to book their appointments out of business hours. This itself proves the need to implement digital patient appointment booking practices in medical offices of hospitals and clinics. The same goes for patient intake. The digital patient intake forms from GrowPractice give the patient the freedom to fill up their intake forms at any time and from anywhere, thereby mitigating all the worries associated with the time and place of medical form fillups.
A significant reduction in wait times
The patient wait time has been declared 84% of patients as 'somewhat important' or 'very important', and thus a crucial factor forming the overall patient experience. Therefore, the reduction of the wait time is not only essential but is mandatory to help your practice scale up. GrowPractice offers the best online intake forms that are fast and uncomplicated to finish quickly, which drags down the wait time efficiently. Do you know that 1 of every 5 patients changes doctors because of long wait times?
Vibing technology
We live in the age of technology where we are surrounded by tv, mobile phones, laptops, smartwatches, and innumerable gadgets and technologies. This is why the patients are open to state that they prefer the online methods of booking appointments, intake, and more. Therefore, implementing the best HIPAA-compliant online forms from GrowPractice is ought to help your practice ooze of professionalism and the digital.
Saves time and money
Practices of today are seeing more patients than ever. Furthermore, the coronavirus pandemic boosted this several times. Time, on the other hand, is turning out to be as priceless as one can expect. Here's where GrowPractice's digital patient intake forms that come with its digital patient intake methods come in handy. This is ought to save a lot of practice and patient time. The digital patient intake methods when compared to the earlier methods that involved paper, are almost cost nothing, thus saving a considerable amount of money overall.
Flawless patient records
Patient records are an important asset to the practices and need to be preserved duly without fail. These records singlehandedly can form the backbone of a clinical condition as well as the diagnosis. All of which points out how crucial it is to keep patient records minutely and this is what the digital patient intake software offered by GrowPractice assure. Manual records are always prone to numerous errors. Every other sector of the medical industry is prone to such errors. The medical errors cost the sector a loss of around $17 billion annually. However, you can simply turn a blind eye to all of these by reaching out to GrowPractice.
HIPAA compliant online intake forms are secure
Online intake forms from GrowPractice are not only fast but are driven by the HIPAA guidelines. HIPAA compliant intake forms from the leading medical office software providers will help your practice retain old customers, attract new customers, form a positive patient experience, by adding a layer of trust or credibility to your improved processes.
Improves patient experience
It goes without saying that the patients would love to onboard themselves with online patient appointment portals and fill up the best HIPAA compliant online forms in no time, all the time being rest assured of their safety. Even the latest records say that nearly 78% of patients are inclined to use a 'secure online method to access their medical histories and share information with their doctor.' Therefore, patient experience would definitely get a big boost with the online patient intake forms and practices.
Scalable and future-ready process
The online methods are more or less scalable and are updated to endure the rages of the times upcoming. So, if you are looking to make your practice future-ready, then opting for the online patient intake software and systems is a must.
Adds to the practice revenues
The earlier patient intake forms include huge paperwork, which heavily affected the overall revenues that the practice earns, the usage of free online intake forms significantly reduces the expenses of a practice. This is another thing that promotes the digital patient intake methods for practices
Solve your practice worries with GrowPractice!
The practices are always there to reduce the patient's troubles, whether it is a regular injury or an emergency but practices often are burdened with numerous worries like growing expenses, leaving medical workers, lack of revenue, no expansion, and more.
GrowPractice however, cares for your practice and lets it grow in its truest sense. Being one of the most reputable providers of medical office software and services, GrowPractice promises the practices an era of growth. It integrates with over 65 EHR/PM software and brings trusted software solutions for medical offices and practices of all types, powered by HIPAA compliance, multi-level security, and data encryption.
The paperless online intake forms from GrowPractice are also the best, which helps the patients complete their registration procedures wherever they wish and on any device of their choice. Furthermore, these software are adding more than 19 new patients per month per provider. So, don't miss out on it and regret it later!
