The pandemic may seem like it was a lifetime ago, but it was only a few short years, and we’re still feeling the changes today. In the worst of the crisis, healthcare facilities struggled to stay afloat: patients stopped seeking non-essential services, and practices had to be creative to keep their staff members employed. While things have stabilized and returned to some semblance of normalcy, notable changes exist. Patients have grown more comfortable with telehealth visits, a significant percentage of staff has left the field, and revenues still haven’t fully recovered.
In the pre-COVID days, budgetary shortfalls automatically meant staffing cuts, but you’re already struggling to keep the staff you have, and hiring has become impossible. Rather than trying to do more with fewer people, smart practice managers are turning to new, cost-efficient technologies that make their offices more productive while allowing staff to make more meaningful contributions to patient health and satisfaction.
Are You Wasting Staff Talent?
When you hired your staff, you tempted them with the promise of making patients’ lives better and providing comfort and care. But over the years, they’ve been pulled into duties that they hate doing; ordering supplies, managing billing, inputting patient data, and confirming appointments. Investing in new technologies takes these tasks out of their hands. These tools make your office run more smoothly and have the added benefit of boosting staff morale and your patients’ experience.
By taking advantage of innovations such as digital payment systems that manage accounts receivables and payables and handle reconciliation, you free your employees to engage with your patients more meaningfully. Similarly, adding digital patient portals that allow patients to access their data, make and cancel their own appointments, and send messages directly to healthcare staff eliminates time that staff spends away from their assigned tasks and empowers patients. The office is more efficient, fewer mistakes are made, and everyone is much happier.
Digitizing Your Front Office Improves Care and Cuts Costs
Digitization of your front office is surprisingly affordable and introduces remarkable efficiencies. Consider the benefits of adding an electronic medical records or practice management system. Rather than overwhelm your already-overworked office staff and pull them away from more important, patient-centric tasks, you can replace your paper-based system with an intuitive system that streamlines the tasks of sending billing reminders and appointments or manually entering patient information. Depending on the system you choose, it may be able to verify a patient’s health insurance information and automatically determine eligibility, generate follow-up care instructions, book new appointments, or improve your billing process.
A cloud-based HIPAA-compliant telecommunication system like RingRx can alleviate the stress of constantly ringing phones and eliminate busy signals and long hold times for your patients. And it can do so without the huge cash outlay that more traditional, hardware-based communication services have previously demanded: Instead, your practice can pay a manageable monthly service plan. The scalable system can grow and respond as your patient load expands without you needing to bring in more staff to accommodate the increased volume.
New Tools Boost Patient Satisfaction
Ask your patients their pet peeves about your practice, and you’re likely to hear about too little personal interaction, hold times that are too long, too much difficulty getting the information they need and challenges of hearing back from their practitioners. You know the work that goes into running your practice, and the more you rely on your legacy systems to get the work done, the more dissatisfied your patients will be.
Today’s digital technologies automate your practice’s processes, expand your office’s communication abilities, and let patients feel more attended to, informed, and in control. Rather than feeling rushed or ignored by staff they’ve known for years– or worse, seeing those staff members lost to budget cuts or burnout – they can discuss their concerns.
Amplify Your Abilities Without Adding Expenses
Adding abilities may sound counterintuitive when you’re concerned about your expenses, but high-tech healthcare applications can maximize your cost efficiencies and make your office more productive. If you’re operating with an outdated communications framework, there’s a good chance that it’s actually costing you time and wasted human resources, not to mention additional outlays for maintenance. Worse yet, a legacy system puts you at risk for non-compliance with HIPAA privacy regulations, or at the very least, means that you must take many extra steps to remain compliant.
RingRX offers a cloud-based, HIPAA-compliant telecommunications system that increases your office efficiency, eliminates the cost of proprietary equipment, and speeds up your patients’ access to care. You’ll alleviate the stress that your staff feels every day and give yourself the ability to put them to work doing what they do best.
For more information on how a RingRx system can manage your calls, reduce patient wait times, boost your practice’s abilities and improve staff and patient satisfaction, contact us today to set up a free 14-day trial.
