Front Office 2.0: How Digital Patient Intake Can Streamline Workflows and Mitigate Staff Burnout
In many healthcare practices, the front office can feel like a scene from the 90s, with staff navigating long lines of patients amid the clamour of ringing phones and restless waiting rooms. Piles of paper clutter desks, and staff juggle between addressing patient questions and sorting through paper forms. Data entry for each patient can take 15-20 minutes, leading to growing patient frustration and overwhelming workloads for the staff.
With patients today expecting streamlined, digital experiences, healthcare practices must modernize. Most front office staff multitask various critical activities—from managing patient registration and check-in, maintaining patient records, answering phone calls, and so on. While these activities cannot be overlooked, a modern front office requires a system that can streamline daily operations, reduce chaos, and maximize productivity.
Enter digital patient intake. Here are five ways that digital tools and automated workflows can revamp the front office experience.
Managing appointment preparation
Preparing for appointments is a time-consuming yet essential task. Based on appointment types, staff must manually identify the forms that patients need to complete, which can be laborious.
How digital intake helps
Digital solutions can streamline the prep work by setting up automated workflows. Based on different appointment types, practices can add relevant forms to the workflows, so patients receive the correct forms with minimal staff involvement. This allows staff to focus more on patient-centered tasks, ultimately enhancing care quality.
Best practice suggestion
Look for and invest in platforms that offer flexibility in using additional digital forms beyond the standard workflow. For instance, if a patient at an OB-GYN clinic needs a mammogram consent during a routine check-up, the platform should allow the staff to send out a standalone digital form, apart from the regular workflow. This keeps processes 100% paper-free while ensuring accurate EHR documentation.
Collecting and documenting patient data
The traditional setup involves two major challenges— (1) paperwork mess and (2) manual data entry and documentation. Paperwork is one of the top reasons why patients dread showing up for their appointments. And on the other hand, manual documentation drains time for the entire team—be it the front office or clinicians. According to a 2023 report, physicians spend 15.5 hours per week on paperwork and administration.
How digital intake helps
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Self-service digital check-in: Self-service options empower patients to complete forms digitally, whether from home using their personal device or at the clinic using a kiosk or tablet. This reduces long lines at the clinic, thereby reducing wait times. Also, with the self-service mode, the staff can monitor check-in comfortably from the desk without investing more time.
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Automated data capture into the EHR: A digital intake solution usually works in synergy with the EHR. The digital solution’s integration capabilities allow it to capture patient data through digital forms and automatically send the information to the EHR. This saves hours of manual work and eliminates the risk of transcription errors.
Best practice suggestion
While most solutions capture patient data into the EHR, look for platforms that send data to the corresponding fields of a patient chart. This will help to significantly reduce manual documentation and save clinicians’ time.
Verifying patient insurance
Verifying patient insurance eligibility manually is inefficient and, at times, error prone. And these mistakes can lead to costly repercussions, such as claims denial. According to the Change Healthcare 2020 report, 27% of claim denials are caused during the patient registration and eligibility process, out of which 86% are potentially avoidable.
How digital intake helps
Digital solutions can automate the entire process, allowing patients and staff to view patient eligibility in advance. This includes accessing details like co-pay, deductibles, and other information, offering financial transparency to everyone.
Best practice suggestion
Seek platforms that allow eligibility rules to be customized based on specialty, improving accuracy, and reducing potential confusion.
Collecting patient payments
Today, 73% of consumers prefer to pay medical bills online versus paying in person or via phone. With such a persistent demand, it’s only right for practices to switch to digital payment channels if they want to lower their bad debts and boost patient payment.
How digital intake helps
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Convenient digital payment channels: Practices can use online payment channels to persuade patients to pay using their personal device, kiosk, or POS. With such digital convenience, patients are more likely to pay their bills, thereby reducing bad debts.
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Recording financial transactions: Digital solutions can automatically post financial transactions to the practice’s PM. This eliminates manual burden and risks of missed or inaccurate processing.
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Automating payment reminders: Instead of relying on manual phone calls or mailed receipts, practices can set up recurring reminders, prompting patients to pay online. These reminders, along with an online payment link, make paying balances quick and easy for patients.
Best Practice Suggestion
Leverage digital payment options across the patient intake journey to boost patient payments. Encourage patients to pay co-pays or prepayments upfront and follow up with timely reminders for post-visit balances.
Simplifying patient communication
Consistent patient engagement is key to maintaining loyalty in this competitive landscape. However, traditional methods like phone calls and mailing fall short in the digital age. In fact, 80% of patients prefer digital communication channels such as secure messaging. Traditional methods like phone calls and mailed notices may no longer suffice.
How digital intake helps
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Automating appointment reminders: Rather than manually reminding patients, digital solutions can automatically send reminders, allowing patients to confirm or reschedule as needed.
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Secure messaging: From one-on-one messages to large-scale broadcasts, secure messaging enables practices to communicate time-sensitive information, answer queries, and build engagement.
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Patient surveys: Surveys are effective when feedback is captured in a timely and quick manner. Digital survey tools can automate this process, making it easier for your staff to capture responses and make data-driven decisions.
Best practice suggestion
Use different communication channels to send targeted messages to different patient population groups. This can be an effective strategy for sending out health campaigns and promoting new services.
The cascading benefits of digital transformation
Adopting a digital front door for your front office can have a rippling impact on healthcare practices:
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Improved patient experience: Digital solutions can improve patient experience by streamlining processes and reducing wait times, thereby building loyalty and higher referrals.
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Higher staff productivity: With digital tools, your practice can alleviate staff burden, eliminating repetitive and mundane tasks. This will, in turn, reduce burnout and boost job satisfaction.
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Better practice efficiency: With automation, healthcare practices can streamline processes from intake to clinical workflows. The overall improvement in coordination will significantly enhance performance, improve care quality, and reduce costs.
With the healthcare landscape becoming more competitive and patient expectations soaring, a digital makeover in the healthcare practice front office is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity. As the first touchpoint in a patient’s journey, optimizing the front office can significantly impact care quality and the financial health of a practice.
Learn more about CheckinAsyst and its digital patient intake and communication offerings here or on the Veradigm App Expo.