When a patient receives a diagnosis that requires specialty care, it can be a devastating and stressful moment in their lives. For healthcare organizations, it sets off a series of actions – each requiring the assistance of a multitude of staff members and clinicians, all at a significant cost.
However, utilizing the right tools, these costs can be reduced, patient satisfaction increased, and new revenue streams can be unlocked. But how?
Requesting medical histories
A significant percentage of hospitals and healthcare organizations still request and transfer medical records via fax. Manually requesting patient medical histories slows care teams and risks errors from redundant data entry, shipping management and more.
Automating the task of medical requests with the assistance of a trusted partner allows healthcare teams to prioritize patient care without repetitive or manual tasks, often at significant financial savings.
Collecting medical data
Healthcare professionals are required to navigate diverse medical data sources from other healthcare providers, Release of Information (ROI) vendors, Health Information Exchanges (HIEs), data networks and more. Each has their own unique methods of retrieval, formats, and delivery methods.
When data collection from multiple sources can be streamlined and even includes medical imaging and pathology material, healthcare teams are freed up and empowered to deliver patient care efficiently.
The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) is an internationally renowned institution, redefining patient care and developing new transplant procedures and anti-rejection therapies. However, the organization needed to achieve substantial time savings between initial patient referral and first clinical visit.
UPMC’s transplant team’s policy, particularly their kidney service, is not to see patients until all medical records have been gathered. And they discovered that most patients were waiting more than 100 days for their first clinical evaluation. They often relied on patients to collect their own records.
The medical center incorporated the eHealth Connect® platform and saw an immediate impact. Coordinators received medical records with one week and, in some cases, as quickly as 24 hours.
Not only did this save significant time between the referral and first clinical evaluation, but it gave medical teams back their time to focus on patient care, not paperwork.
When a transplant coordinator’s focus is consumed by medical records, patients are at risk. When medical data collection is automated, patients receive a higher level of care. Coordinators also report being more job satisfaction and allows them to work to the top of their license.
Additionally, UPMC doesn’t want to turn down an organ, but an entire patient workup must be completed to list that patient as a transplant candidate. With eHealth Connect, patients were listed 35 to 45 days sooner than before the system was implemented.
Coordinators can more easily handle large caseloads and patients are eligible to be listed to receive transplants more quickly. Increased volume without the additional workload and an increase in the number of transplants facilitated are beneficial all around, including for the budget.
Organizing medical histories
Physicians spend nearly six hours on an electronic health record (EHR) for every eight hours of patient scheduled time. In fact, clinicians spend as much as 50 percent of their time working in EMRs. Not only can that amount of time feasibly be reduced, but the time they do spend within EMRs can be far more efficient and cost effective.
Managing different healthcare platforms and complex patient histories can overwhelm charts with irrelevant data, potentially leading to critical information being overlooked. Using technology platforms like eHealth Connect to sift through excess information, allows clinicians to interact with a clinical actionable and organized medical history based on comprehensive clinical templates and specialty-driven requests.
Most importantly, this ensures healthcare providers have a productive and meaningful initial patient visit.
Automatically request, collect, organize, and deliver – streamlining these processes reduces costs, improves patient experience, and helps achieve health system volume growth goals.
Organized health records have a multitude of benefits, but ultimately, there is a direct connection between automating the records collection and delivery process and increased revenue for healthcare organizations.
Who is best at gathering medical records, so many of our partners — like the team at UPMC — say it’s eHealth Technologies.
Discover how eHealth Technologies can help.
