Clinic owners need to carefully consider when selecting an EMR system. Making the wrong selection could leave your practice scrambling to keep on top of documentation, billing and unpaid claims – all while risking discord in patients’ health records and potentially putting patients in jeopardy of care.
A quality EMR can help you overcome these hurdles. Look for solutions with features like voice recognition and HIPAA compliance to meet your needs.
Streamlined Scheduling
An efficient clinic benefits both patients and staff, saving both time and money in the process. When implemented with an EMR that offers integrated patient appointment scheduling capability, practices enjoy greater automation that decreases manual data entry efforts as well as administrative workload.
Automated appointment reminders can increase attendance and reduce no-shows by sending emails, texts, or voicemails in advance of appointments to patients – helping ensure no missed sessions occur. Create a clear cancellation policy to promote accountability and timely communication with your patients, while setting an appointment schedule that reflects both therapists’ availability and expertise while taking into account each patient’s unique case history and needs.
Before your patients arrive at their appointment, quickly capture insurance coverage and patient details with a digital intake form that’s sent via email or text message. Verify their eligibility so you don’t end up with denied or deferred claims.
Optimize the billing process by consolidating payments and invoices onto one platform, eliminating double data entry while guaranteeing accuracy of information. It also lowers payer denial risks that often plague physical therapy practices; using this central platform you’ll be able to submit reimbursement claims quickly and accurately in order to maximize revenue while knowing that StrataEMR’s HIPAA compliance will protect patients’ privacy.
Improved Patient Care
Physical therapists that prioritize documentation and billing over patient care often overlook its importance for building loyal customers and creating referral engines for their practice. When physical therapists focus too heavily on this area of their business, this can result in rushed visits or ineffective treatments being administered, which is both physically and financially costly to patients. Implementing systems that prioritize the patient experience helps PTs build loyalty among customers as well as an uptick in business referrals.
Physical therapists looking to enhance patient satisfaction should select EMR software that is easy to navigate for both staff and patients alike. A user-friendly system makes scheduling appointments and screenings more efficient while making it simpler for patients to keep track of their appointments and manage insurance claims.
Use of an EMR can improve communication between physicians and their patients, ultimately increasing personalized and safe treatments for them. The software’s purpose is to send clinical summaries directly to patients, engaging them more in their healthcare journey, while offering features such as e-prescriptions and customized consultation templates.
When selecting an EMR system for their practice, physical therapists (PTs) should take several factors into consideration when choosing one: costs upfront as well as ongoing fees such as maintenance or updates, scalability, security measures, features such as e-prescribing or telemedicine capabilities as well as patient portals should all be carefully evaluated before selecting their software solution. They must also make sure it complies with HIPAA regulations while offering adequate training and support services to their staff members.
Easier Documentation
Documentation overload is one of the primary factors contributing to physical therapy burnout. Not only is it time-consuming and tiresome, but keeping up with it all may prove challenging and lead to frustration for PTs.
Physical therapy software specifically tailored to simplifying documentation can ease stress levels and boost overall clinic efficiency. An ideal system would include customizable documentation templates tailored to each therapist’s workflows and shortcuts that enable faster, more accurate documentation; TextExpander can reduce typing requirements dramatically at points-of-service by enabling users to quickly enter notes directly into an electronic medical record without typing every individual word individually.
Another key element of documentation is ensuring a complete and accurate treatment history is written into each patient file. This should include medical diagnoses (along with relevant ICD-10 codes), progress notes, and treatment outcomes; timely documentation ensures accurate claim submissions without denials of coverage and helps physical therapists remain compliant with insurance and Medicare requirements for documentation. Effective documentation has an enormously positive effect on PTs’ bottom lines while simultaneously helping them deliver high-quality patient care.
Increased Revenue
As one way of increasing revenue at your physical therapy clinic, diversifying payment sources is one effective strategy for increasing revenue. This means having cash pay patients, insurances and grants as various income streams that provide stability if one drops off unexpectedly or disappears completely.
Another way to increase revenue is through retail item promotion and sale. This activity can engage staff members while also being fun! Be sure to offer educational content about what products are being sold; webinars or uploading videos onto your business social media page can be useful ways of providing this content.
Make sure to reward staff who sell the most retail items. One way of doing this would be through hosting a competition that awards those who sell most during a specific time period, perhaps with lunch or free sessions for services like recovery lounge or dry needling.
An EMR can dramatically improve how your physical therapy practice operates, so be sure to select one that meets the specific needs of your practice and will maximize profitability.