To get a steady stream of patients moving throughout your practice, you need to have an optimized office workflow. To achieve an optimized workflow, your practice needs a team of qualified staff members and modern optometry software with features that accelerate the workflow without risking the quality of patient care.

In this post, we’ll cover a few of the modern optometry software features that improve your office workflow to help guide your patients’ journey through their appointment more efficiently.

Optometry Software Features to Improve Your Workflow

Communication Features

Communication errors can cause staff frustration and lead to a loss of your patients’ trust. Effectively communicating with your staff and your patients can significantly improve your office workflow by streamlining patient handoffs and improving patient care. Using modern optometry software, you can improve the communication with your staff, your patients, and other medical professionals.

With a comprehensive practice management and EHR solution, your practice can use these tools to increase communication throughout your practice:

• Patient portal: A connected patient portal allows your patients to communicate with staff members and fill out their pre-appointment paperwork, which will automatically be pulled into the practice management software and EHR solution.
• Automated patient recall: An automated patient recall system embedded into you practice management and EHR solution will send your patients appointment reminders through email or text messages to reduce the time your staff is spending on the phone reaching out to individuals.
• ePrescribing: Eliminate pharmacy callbacks or faxing prescriptions to the pharmacist with an embedded ePrescribing tool that synchronizes with a patient’s medical and allergy history to identify and fill the right prescription for the patient.
• Built-in messaging: The built-in messaging feature in a modern EHR and practice management solution keeps your front office staff connected with those in the back office so you can improve handoffs, resolve issues, and work more effectively as a team.
• Secure Interoperability: Interoperability enables software to securely share and populate patient data into authorized solutions to reduce potential data entry errors and improve office efficiency.

Mobility Capabilities

Cloud-based optometry software gives you the ability to securely access your data from anywhere with an internet connection. Using cloud-based optometry software, you no longer have to stay late to back-up or convert data so that you can take it home with you to work. Simply log into your account using your username and password, and pick up where you left off.

Additionally, with access to the solution on a tablet, you can move from room-to-room for more flexibility throughout the practice and streamline the check-in process.

Rapid Documentation

To push a patient through the appointment quickly without negatively affecting the quality of care, you need a way to rapidly and accurately record exam results. With some EHR solutions, to accurately document exam findings you have to turn your back on the patient and click around the dashboard, save the documentation until after the exam is over, or hire a scribe to document the exam.

Modern optometry solutions are designed to provide you with a handful of tools that will help you accurately record exam findings with fewer clicks and more patient-facing time. These features include:

• Preset values
• Slider tools
• Favorite selections
• Voice dictation
• Clinical decision support

For more tips on how to improve your practice efficiency, download our ebook on optimizing your workflow with optometry software.