You, your practice, and your staff are constantly doing as much as possible to maximize patient turn-around and provide the best quality of care. If you’re an optometrist who likes to help as many patients as you can in a single day, your software system and its countless features will help ease the entire process step-by-step, all while facilitating a high quality of care for your patients.
The best software can help take some of the workload of data entry off of your staff's shoulders. And less data entry and tedious processing will help make your entire office workflow more efficient, allowing you to see more patients each day. Let's take a look at some of the features you should look for in an EHR software that will help make your exam lane workflow perform its best!
Bringing the Exam Process to the 21st Century with EHR Software
Performing the Exam with an All-In-One System
When entering patient information into the EHR software, your system should quickly guide your exam workflow by populating repetitive patient information throughout the system. The EHR should also generate codes for treatment plans, billing, orders, procedures, and patient counseling. When coding is accurately completed in the exam room, the biller will be able to submit the claim quicker and move patients along faster at check out. Incomplete or inaccurate data documentation can cause problems for both the OD and the patient, as workflow of the office is thrown out of sync.
Embedded ePrescribing
Calling or faxing a prescription is a waste of valuable time for both your practice and the pharmacy. Embedded ePrescribing is one of the most useful tools for optimizing workflow as it sends prescriptions directly to the pharmacy from your system. No more pharmacy callbacks or jamming out to classical music while on hold. Future time savings are also included in your EHR, as ePrescribing automates prescription renewal requests and authorization processeses. Having ePrescribing integrated into your practice’s exam workflow will allow all medication and allergy history to be seamlessly transferred between your software and ePrescribing tool, giving you quick access before assigning a prescription to a patient.
Tablet Friendly EHR
Physically moving from room to room for an OD is a process in itself. On average if you’re seeing only 1.5-2 patients per hour you’re in need of a workflow tune-up. An efficient workflow should allow ODs to see around 3.5-4 patients per hour. Two common exam flow problems faced by ODs today are having to log in and out of software multiple times, and the inability to access information on multiple platforms. These small, but important, inconveniences can slow down your practice down in a big way. Many ODs now carry tablets from room to room that make it easier to spend face time with more patients. Tablets allow them to stay logged into their system as they aren't switching devices between rooms.
Developing patient-centered habits and using technology in your daily practice could be the boost your workflow desperately needs to break into a new market or finally optimize workflow internally.
