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T E C H N O L O G Y
patients," she says. "I'd be going back and forth, getting out all the files I
needed, looking for this, looking for that. And if I was working after
everyone left, I couldn't get everything I needed, because some information was locked away."
And now?
"Now it's a matter of 8 or 10 minutes to do the whole report, and it's
more accurate," says Ms. Reda. "All the information I need is right
there."
2. Online Registration
How much easier is pre-registration when you use one of several systems now available? "I had one patient tell me she preregistered for
her procedure while she was in Wal-Mart shopping," says Brett
Hawkins, MBA, facility administrator at the Meridian (Miss.) Surgery
Center. "Patients tell us they love it."
Chances are your patients won't be the only ones who love it. "The
information we get now is more pertinent," says Mr. Hawkins. "We're
getting more legible, more complete medical histories, and that makes
it easier to look for red flags. It's allowed us to reprocess toward more
patient care rather than paper pushing."
And what if your patients can't or don't want to preregister online
(or in line at Wal-Mart)? "We give them iPads when they come in,"
says Mr. Hawkins. "It's all digital and it takes about 12 minutes to
pre-register, whether they do it online or here. Before, it took 35 or
40 minutes, because we had to go through everything, and sometimes we couldn't read what people had written. It's definitely a
game-changer."
3. Payroll
Automation can take most of the headaches out of the process.
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