During the coronavirus epidemic, the nation’s healthcare workers went into overdrive to care for their regular patients plus those needing special assistance battling the virus. The trend toward overwork is continuing, however, putting many physicians and their staff at risk of burnout.

At the crux of many stressful work environments in general practices is the charting process and documentation overload. In the United States, doctors’ charting practices are typically three times longer than those in other nations around the world, with doctors performing two hours of documentation for every hour they spend seeing patients.

Part of the reason for these onerous charting tasks are:

• Ensuring your charting notes recover the highest charge possible from insurance payors
• Having to cater to the standards and documentation requirements of dozens of payors — many of which do not coordinate
• Ensuring protection against malpractice lawsuits

With the U.S. healthcare system unlikely to change in the near future, the smart general practice must find ways to reduce the documentation workload and streamline processes to keep staff frustration — and burnout — to a minimum.

Using Document Management to Boost General Practice Efficiency

When patients arrive at your practice, they expect to receive fast, efficient care. To deliver this level of service, doctors and staff must keep track of a host of patient details — including vital signs, vaccination records, bloodwork, diagnoses, treatments and medications, and administrative details. 

Practices must also keep track of dates for follow-up appointments, payments due, and other communications as well as billing and claim management. Drug inventories and other care supplies must be maintained and kept current to avoid treatment delays. These tasks, and overall general practice efficiency, can be easily managed using document management software (DMS).

Here are just a few of the ways a DMS can assist your practice in providing better, more capable care to your clients:

1. Streamlining the Gathering of Data

Whether you are seeing clients via telemedicine or in-person appointments, gathering data regarding your patients’ medical histories and concerns is a critical way to manage appointments and care faster and more accurately. Having medical records available at your fingertips allows you to make better decisions based on that patient’s specific health profile. 

A DMS allows you to create a robust, easily searchable database of all your patient details, including communication and care notes regarding specific visits.

By digitizing paper documents such as bills of lading, invoices, and accounts payable information you can build a comprehensive database that will allow your administrative staff to stay on top of drug and supply inventories, billing, and monies due. 

A DMS offers intuitive archiving of these digital documents for easy retrieval and management.

DMS’ offer robust reporting capabilities that will allow you to gain visibility into your practice’s workflows, identify weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and build new strategies to increase productivity. Reducing staff frustration and burnout is key — and spending less time searching for critical documents is a great way to start.

Blue Technologies Has the Document Management Expertise You Need

Most general practices are already struggling with staff shortfalls, overburdened staff, and a tight budget — all reasons why many don’t have an in-house IT department. With most IT duties falling to a receptionist or even a technician or nurse practitioner, it is hard to implement even the simplest and most helpful digital tools.

At Blue Technologies, we have document management experts that can act as an extension of your staff, bringing deep knowledge and expertise to help you reduce your reliance on paper documents, expand your care capabilities without adding extra staff, and streamline workflows for enhanced productivity. Not only can our team help you get control of your operations, but we can do it in a manner consistent with your budget requirements for a higher return on investment.