It’s true that our society in general and the healthcare industry, in particular, have experienced significant leaps in technology that now offer us tremendous benefits. Our hospitals and healthcare companies offer some of the most advanced patient care in the world. And while this is all good and well, there are areas that unfortunately lag behind, especially in digital healthcare administration methods.
When you think about common methods hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare companies communicate with patients and others (insurance providers, other health care professionals etc…) it’s easy to see that traditional methods relying on manually processing administration tasks are not cost-effective. For the most part, this takes place using outdated technology like old fashioned mail service. The cost of doing things this way is enormous. A change to the conveyance of information via a digital format would save an estimated 8 billion dollars a year as outlined in this article
It’s true that our society in general and the healthcare industry, in particular, have experienced significant leaps in technology that now offer us tremendous benefits. Our hospitals and health care facilities offer some of the most advanced patient care in the world. And while this is all good and well, there are areas that unfortunately lag behind, especially in healthcare administration methods.
There is still an overall reliance on outdated communication services. Specifically landline telecommunication, and of course the costly practice of traditional hardcopy mailing practices. When you think of the numbers involved, both in terms of the cost of paying people to perform these services as well as the cost of material, even a slight trend toward digitization could result in large cost savings.
Naturally the lure of saving money is the main reason that facilities are moving in this direction. This is an unneeded cost and one that can be spent in other areas. This is money that doesn’t need to be spent, not really. It’s being used on something that can be easily be done by computer, with proper encryption of course; which is necessary to keep patient data private and in compliance with HIPAA regulations.
As stated in the article, Gwendolyn Lohse, Deputy director at CAQH (Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare) stated, “I think we’re all familiar with HIPAA, which was created two decades ago. Even though that it was created two decades ago, we’re still really using manual processing for a lot of these transactions and a minimum reporting of the results to realize, as an industry, we need to do better and we need to work together to do better and to push adoption on things that do exist like best practices so we can have electronic, real-time transactions to support what needs to be a modern healthcare system.”
RingRx is at the forefront of the move towards a digital solution in how we communicate. In using our smartphone app in addition to the option to have the most advanced desk phones on the market for your office you have less to worry about since both utilize encryption technology making HIPAA compliance a non-issue. The advanced RingRx on-call application is user-friendly and makes you available to the needs of your office in real-time. And the money saved when switching to a cloud-based VoIP service like RingRx is substantial. For health care facilities looking to improve efficiency and save money, we are here to help out.
For more information on the topics touched upon in this blog please follow the link below.
http://revcycleintelligence.com/news/how-automation-technology-could-cut-8-billion-in-healthcare
