Physicians embrace the healthcare profession to take care of the patients and not to focus on administrative tasks. Yet these tasks continue to dominate a significant portion of their time and effort, leading to frustration and burnout.

With the proliferation of digital technologies, almost all aspects of everyday life have been digitized, and for all the right reasons. The healthcare industry has been an early adapter to technological advancements, aiming to deliver superior quality care through them. The physicians are increasingly leveraging digital technologies to automate the routine administrative tasks to not only reduce their burden but also to improve their services.

Administrative tasks can be overwhelming for physicians. They constitute a significant turnoff leading to job dissatisfaction and turnover. Interestingly, there has been a substantial shift of focus of time-consuming administrative tasks from manual to digital. And this shift is playing an imperative role in meeting continually changing patient demands in an era of healthcare consumerism. So, while patients expect to be treated like customers, digitizing the routine administrative tasks can significantly enhance their patient experience.

Consider digitizing the following:

Patient Check-In

Patient check-in can be a time-consuming and laborious task. Filling out several forms and entering and re-entering of data can contribute to administrative burden as well as patient dissatisfaction. Having the patients check themselves can significantly boost staff efficiency while decreasing patient wait times. You can deploy practice-owned tablets or kiosks that are directly connected to your EHRs for a secure and hassle-free check-in. The patients can then fill in all the required information without interacting with the front office staff.

Anything you can do to reduce the paperwork will essentially reduce your administrative burden. You can overcome several concerns of paper-based records such as legibility issues, scanning of forms into EHRs, etc. The best practices might include:

• Personalizing the self-check-in experience.
• Choose a user-friendly application that supports simple navigation with clear instructions.
• Encourage patients to complete forms in advance to save up on time.
• Prepare for faster check-ins.

Documentation

No doubt, physical documentation is one of the biggest hassles in a healthcare setting. It typically requires an average of 16 minutes per patient encounter. It is the most critical component of the care delivery process since it entails all the vital information such as medical coding, reimbursement, quality metrics, and a lot more. You can use speech recognition software to reduce the physical documentation burden by 2 hours a day. Additionally, patient acuity can be captured more accurately to drive more accurate payment.

Patient-Provider Communication

Gone are the days when the patients would silently wait for long hours at the physician’s office or hold a phone tag to schedule an appointment. They today seek more interactive platforms to engage in communication with their providers to schedule appointments, hear about a lab result, or request a prescription refill. Patient portals offer a secure platform to digitize patient-provider communication, offering communication support 24/7.

This strategy has been proven to significantly improve patient satisfaction levels while also reducing the administrative burden on the physician and staff. For instance, you can text multiple patients simultaneously for an appointment reminder. Other potential services might include asynchronous remote evaluations, virtual check-ins, and online digital evaluation. Digital communications can facilitate you in:

• Obtaining digital patient consent
• Educating patients
• Sending out automated reminders

Physicians embrace the healthcare profession to take care of the patients and not to focus on administrative tasks. Yet these tasks continue to dominate a significant portion of their time and effort, leading to frustration and burnout. Digitizing administrative tasks can, therefore, greatly help in addressing this glaring conce