With technology evolving each day and smart devices getting more accessible than ever, patients expect automation, digitization, and instant support. They don’t want to be deterred by time-consuming tasks. Patients have myriad options when it comes to choosing a healthcare provider, so they’d want to be served by those who make it easy to do work with them.
If your healthcare facility isn’t adopting the current digital marketing trends, you’re way behind your competitors. So to streamline your processes, improve communication, and reduce paper load, digitizing the patients’ experience while remaining HIPAA-compliant is the key.
Remote Patient Onboarding
Onboarding is nerve-wracking. Admitting patients demands a lot of time and effort. But, having a safe and dedicated digital format connects everyone for collaborative care anywhere in the world.
Also, with healthcare getting pretty inconvenient due to the coronavirus outbreak, a doctor’s office makes for a risky environment. Therefore, leveraging technology enhances efficiency, lessens burnout, and proves to be a frontline approach. This way, remote teams can better record, manage, and report patient onboarding interactions while staying digital.
Advantages
Paper forms are outdated and inefficient. But, digital onboarding is a new way of doing things. Why?
1. Fewer Errors
The digital onboarding process possesses fewer chances for errors. The data online has to be entered just once, can be verified by different personnel anytime, and be seamlessly transferred wherever required.
2. Reduced Expenses
Digitizing patient onboarding helps reduce expenses. You don’t spend on printing and storing documents. And it also eliminates labor-intensive tasks like sorting and sending documents by mail.
3. Automated Communication
Automated activities streamline your workflow ensuring precision and efficiency. Also, high-quality software keeps communication safe on the cloud.
4. Cloud Storage
Information on the cloud is secure as the access is given only through designated permissions. This again eliminates the need for heaps of paperwork along with difficult manual tasks.
5. Faster Onboarding
Paperless patient onboarding is less stressful. Automation and streamlined efficiency accelerate the processes. Questions are clarified, decisions are executed, and the process is concluded – quicker than ever.
Process of Paperless Onboarding
Patient onboarding is required to get new patients oriented with your practice. But how do you do that?
1. Collect information before making appointments
Online forms are embedded on sites or mobile applications for patients to fill details before fixing an appointment. This saves time for staff and smooths patient flow.
2. Accept e-Signatures
Electronic signatures are necessary to process consent forms. These expedite and streamline the process for both staff members and patients.
3. Auto-route information
Routing the information automatically to the concerned staff and departments facilitates the treatment plan before the patient’s arrival. This helps you prepare for the patient’s first visit, and verify insurance and other details beforehand.
4. Plan additional treatment and follow-ups
If the patient needs additional care, you can simply pull up the required forms and route data to the appropriate departments for further processes and follow-ups.
5. Gather feedback
Sending out a survey form to collect valuable feedback again helps you and your staff improve in future care.
Secure Forms
When it comes to streamlining digital patient onboarding, prioritize getting forms online. Your patients are already stressed, or sick and they can hardly deal with a stack of forms. So allowing them to complete the forms online can do wonders!
Digital forms are convenient and smarter. However, protecting this information is a fundamental aspect of your medical practice. Not only does it build your standing but it also nullifies the chances of a security breach, thus maintaining patient trust.
Secure Hosting Using AWS
Amazon Web Services (AWS) delivers a scalable, low-cost cloud hosting solution with high reliability. It offers a practical way of digitizing and organizing electronic health records while maintaining HIPAA-compliant cloud infrastructure. It guards the confidentiality, integrity, as well as the availability of the sensitive data. AWS secures the underlying infrastructure that supports the cloud and has shown proven results in deploying solutions that meet industry-specific standards while protecting privacy and managing sensitive data.
Secure Data Retrieval
When it’s about the health data of patients, HIPAA necessitates a series of precautions. But, healthcare facilities must also make efforts to make retrieval easy and secure.
With the right HIPAA-compliant solutions like AWS and data encryption, data is automatically and regularly backed up for a definite period. This initiates a rock-solid one-click disaster recovery process. Moreover, it’s protected using the same security measures as used for the regular production environment.
System Integration with Existing Software
System integration maintains workflow efficiency, relationships, and operational costs. It’s can provide endless rewards including security, simplicity, and real-time visibility. System integration is a mix of new technologies with the old, enabling automation, control, and clarity to encourage partner relationships and attain higher business agility.
So you just need to connect end-to-end data flow between the customers and internal processes. An ecosystem-driven cloud integration platform like AWS can easily support such digital transformation initiatives.
HIPAA Compliance
HIPAA establishes standards for safeguarding sensitive patient information. But data breach is all too common. So when you deal with protected data, ensure having the security measures right in place. Here are a few things which can help you stay HIPAA-compliant:
Secure Forms: Use a HIPAA-compliant form builder to collect data safely and avoid costly HIPAA violations.
Encryption: Encryption levels up the standard for online data protection, and converts the information into a code that can be decrypted with a unique hash.
Audit: Always keep track of user activity to detect potentially destructive happening and avoid both internal and external threats.
Access Control: This means setting up permissions for online forms to confirm that authorized users access the data and the bad actors can’t.
Automatic Timeout: Sessions can time-out automatically after a definite period of inactivity. This lowers the chances of data sitting exposed on a passive device.
Maintenance: Staying updated with the latest safety measures is the key to maintaining HIPAA-compliant status.
Final Words
Digital patient onboarding involves a series of steps for moving them from registration through billing. This has always been managed with manual work, but it’s now getting outdated and prone to errors. Your patients are using mobile devices and other technology to manage every area of their lives. So it’s time for healthcare to catch up as well!
