What a perfect patient lifecycle really looks like

The faults of legacy EHR software are so well-known that EHR technology has been heavily criticized by the health care industry for decades.

We all know these tools are clunky, difficult to customize and lead to a poor patient lifecycle. Yet with all the talk surrounding the shortcomings of EHR technology, what should the patient lifecycle look like if legacy EHR tools performed optimally?

First, everything about the patient needs to exist in one system. No health care clinic wants to deal with multisystem chaos, nor should they have to. Technology is more advanced now than ever, and there’s no excuse for failing to work independently of other technology. For a patient lifecycle to be truly perfect, the EHR tool needs to be able to handle everything, from patient check in, all the way through billing. Clinics shouldn’t be burdened with the task of learning five different systems just to spend less time with their patients in the end.

Once an independently-operating EHR tool has been implemented, the next step is to automate admission before the patients even walk in the door. All sign in procedures, insurance processing and other tedious tasks should be completed prior to even meeting the patient for the first time. By having a system that can automate admissions, patients gain the ability to walk in and see their provider right away, and health care providers are better able to stick to their schedule. With a perfect patient lifecycle, there should be less than a five-minute wait between the time patients walk in, when the nurse takes their vitals and when they see their provider.

Once the provider meets the patient, all the patient’s information should already be easily accessible in less than two clicks. This allows the provider to jump right into treating the patient rather than plugging data into an outdated system. After the visit, providers can then type in any new notes or use voice recognition to speak their notes into the system. The point is that everything should be easy, because no provider wants to spend half their day dealing with software.

From there, the prescription can then be called to the appropriate pharmacy, the next appointment can be scheduled, the provider can easily follow up with the patient and all insurance claims can be filed automatically. The key takeaway of a perfect patient lifecycle is the uninterrupted flow of the patient receiving stellar care without having to wait or deal with the headache of a clinic’s poorly executed administrative processes.

Heading into 2020, the perfect patient lifecycle can even be taken one step further. For clinics that have high patient no-show rates, new advancements in artificial intelligence will soon be able to identify which patients are likely to skip their appointment. If a patient is flagged as “high risk of no-show,” the clinic can then offer a telehealth appointment as an alternative.

Is your clinic ready to achieve the perfect patient lifecycle? Contact us today to find out how Axiom, powered by HiMS can make this a practical reality.

More from the Knowledge Center