Your medical practice probably relies heavily on your EHR system. The days of an actual paper trail seem like a thing of the past. But even though you are using your EHR, you may not be using it to its full capacity. Consider if your EHR is providing maximum benefits or if you are neglecting some powerful aspects of your system. If you are not tracking essential EHR data points, you are working without vital data that can improve your workflow, patient satisfaction, and financial health. When used correctly, your EHR system can give you timely insights into what your medical facility or practice does well and what needs to be improved.
EHR Data Point Basics
The basic role of an EHR is to safeguard a patient’s medical history, including diagnoses, treatment plans, imaging, labs, allergies, and other vital information. This electronic record allows easy access to all of a patient’s medical professionals, which improves patient care. Practitioners can coordinate care, monitor prescriptions, and get a clear overview of a patient’s health. EHRs simplify record keeping as well. As helpful as these benefits are, they are just a fraction of what your system should do for you. With the help of expert EHR consultants, you can track many essential data points. This information can transform your practice into a more efficient, patient-friendly enterprise.
EHR Data Points for Workflow Monitoring
EHR systems allow you to monitor your workflow for inefficiencies that slow down your process and compromise patient care. You can use the systems to track every aspect of a patient visit from check-in to follow-up visits. Reports show you where you are losing time in your workflow and why certain tasks are not being completed in a timely manner. These lapses mean you see fewer patients per hour, which affects your bottom line. Also, patient satisfaction suffers during long delays. Some essential data tools in this area include:
- Practice Dashboard – Displays provider metrics such as radiology results, eRX, outstanding labs, tasks, and appointments. It gives a snapshot of practice efficiency.
- PAQ Audit – Lists outstanding PAQ items such as labs, radiology, diagnostics, orders, and chart note documents. Your physicians will be better able to stay current with these items and complete patient treatment more quickly.
- Open Orders – Tracks patients’ open orders such as immunizations, injections, referrals, labs, and diagnostics to ensure that the order loop is closed on these essential tasks.
Often, just a few simple steps can make a significant improvement to your workflow.
Practice Management Data Points for Revenue Tracking
Practice Management systems combined with EHRs also help keep your revenue stream healthy. You can easily collect data on the number of appointments made and kept during set periods. The right system can also highlight problems with collecting copays, filing incorrect claims, and incurring bad debts. All practices experience these issues, but left uncorrected, they are costly and potentially affect patient care by limiting potential technological improvements and staff additions. The following Practice Management data collection tools can help you improve your revenue collection.
- Revenue Cycle Dashboard -This feature tracks over-the-counter cash collection, overall gross charges, payments, adjustments and outstanding AR. You can better understand your financial flow strengths and weaknesses with this dashboard.
- Copay Audit – This report allows you to see problems in copay collection, a major source of unpaid medical bills. You can identify who needs remediation in this area and provide additional training.
- Provider Summary – How your physicians code and submit claims has an enormous impact on your revenue stream. You can use reports to track how your claims are being coded and see if that is affecting insurance reimbursement.
No practice can afford to have inefficient revenue collection. Practice Management data point tracking can end bad financial practices.
EHR Data Points and Patient Satisfaction
Your facility’s success depends on acquiring and keeping patients. And patients today expect prompt, professional service from everyone, especially their medical team. That means you need to keep patient needs in mind during their entire experience. Of course, your patients need to be satisfied with the medical treatment they receive, but they also need to be happy with check-in, wait time, testing, billing, etc. To measure patient satisfaction, you can use the following tools:
- Patient Tracking – Your EHR can provide appointment times, check-in times, time spent with staff and wait time for the provider,
- Front Desk Audit – Use this tool to identify ways to streamline the check-in process. You’ll identify logjams in copay collection, insurance card scanning, and portal enrollment.
- Appointment Analysis – This report identifies appointment patterns by tracing scheduled appointments versus kept, canceled, and no-show appointments. You’ll be able to see if your established patients are making and keeping their appointments. This analysis alerts you to potential patient satisfaction issues.
You can improve patient satisfaction, engagement, and retention by using all of your EHR’s potential to track key data.
The TempDev Advantage
Proper EHR use allows you to use essential data points to improve your practice on every level. Achieving this goal means implementing an advanced system like NextGen EHR. But working with the experienced TempDev team of consultants is just as essential. They understand your needs and how your EHR system can meet them. TempDev’s experts will assess your current data collection and help you make improvements that will up your patient satisfaction, revenue stream, and workflow efficiency. In today’s competitive climate, you need to use your EHR to provide the right data and not just unfocused information.
For more information, contact us here or call 1-888-TEMP.DEV. Maximize your EHR potential with help from the TempDev experts.