Essential Work: Using Technology to Advance Health Partnerships | Healthcare IT Today

The following is a guest article by me Dan Torrens, CEO at eHealth Technologies

Healthcare management teams everywhere are always doing more, but somehow they always feel like they’re playing.

Mainly, between 30 and 47 percent of US hospitals still rely on fax or mail to send and receive patient records. Only 40 percent of hospitals Electronically integrate data from other hospitals outside their system and only a depressing 30 percent of skilled nursing facilities exchange data outside their walls.

That adds more work for staff chasing medical records, wasted valuable time for providers who don’t have a complete medical history, and frustration for patients as they have to wait endless days or weeks when they are still important. appointments are delayed waiting on medical records.

Although many health systems have moved away from mail, telephone, and fax for the transmission of medical records, it is clear that it is not enough to take advantage of the technologies available to increase the cooperation of health care.

Using Technology to Increase Best Practices and Ensure Accuracy

A large cancer center located in Virginia serves a large number of cancer patients who require complex treatment plans and require ongoing monitoring and management. To help improve patient care and improve health outcomes, the cancer center brought in additional oncology specialists and expanded to satellite clinics.

Challenge: the facility needed the highest level of safety, accuracy, and security when updating and processing patient records, but also needed to improve and standardize medical record applications throughout the hospital system.

Solution: the cancer center is in contact with provider of advanced technology solutions developing new methods and workflows for reporting applications. The process was designed to be efficient, but can also be customized to meet the unique needs of each unique unit.

The result is that every records request has a consistent look and feel so nurses know where to go and that the right records are being requested.

At the same time the processes were equal, it was important to maintain a high level of accuracy. Leaving too much for the provider’s staff or medical records department to explain leads to incomplete reports. By using advanced technology solutions, donors were delivered exactly what they needed, eliminating the time previously spent filtering out duplicate or unnecessary information.

Since adopting advanced technology to enhance their healthcare collaboration efforts, cancer center patients are now seen faster, complete medical histories are available within ts’ clinical practice, allowing staff to focus solely on the patient and the hospital has seen significant growth. income.

How Technology Can Improve Healthcare Collaboration

Financial systems around the world use technology effectively to make complex, secure transactions every day. It is past time for America’s health care system to embrace technology to reduce treatment times and increase patient and provider satisfaction.

Here is just one example of how it can work:

• A Patient Receives a Referral, Also Known as a Record Request
• Advanced Technology Speeds Up Collection of Medical Records, Images, and Pathology Materials
• Clinical Technology Organizes Records and Tools to Simplify the Diagnostic Process for Physicians
• Complete and Processable Documents Are Transferred Securely Electronically to Workflow
• The Maintenance Team can quickly Create a Maintenance Plan

When a patient is referred, it is unlikely that there will be an appointment with the patient if there is no medical history available for the patient. Burdening patients and staff with the collection of these records delays the scheduling of that first important visit by critical days, weeks or more.

Using new technology solutions allows healthcare organizations to quickly organize patients with the confidence that important records will be ready to go, eliminating the re-organization of people due to lack of medical history needed, and prevent patient leakage by getting the patient into the system quickly. A safe, organized process also makes the patient trust the most important things.

As with all collaborative issues, medical record retrieval management and organization can vary greatly across health services and specialty areas. Using technology, especially narrow AI, identifies operational inefficiencies, allows for improvements, and creates metrics based on improved performance. The more reliable and predictable the results, the more satisfied the medical staff and patients.

Physicians, in particular, experience great frustration when their valuable time is wasted by providing inappropriate or poorly organized information. Poor data management in the patient chart is a leading cause of dissatisfaction among the care team. The addition of specialized technology solutions can achieve structured medical records delivered directly to the medical records system.

Every moment counts – Technology Saves Valuable Time

Health systems that incorporate technology to improve health care collaboration are:

• Improving Patient Experiences by Reducing Time from Referral to Treatment
• Providing Medically Organized Medical Records to Providers, Making Their Time More Purposeful and Efficient, Allowing Them to Quickly Assess the Patient and Determine the Appropriate Plan of Care.
• Streamlining the Claims Process, Relieving Managers, and Allowing Them to Spend More Time Supporting Patients Directly.
• Improving the Key Point for Health Systems, Reducing Patient Flow

A healthy relationship is important. It is our best opportunity to improve patient outcomes and provider satisfaction. Using technology can significantly reduce the time it takes for patients to benefit from advanced treatment options and speed up the road to recovery.

It’s past time for hospitals and health care facilities across the US to leave fax machines and data CDs behind and take advantage of new technologies that save time and can save lives. .

About Dan Torrens

Dan Torrens is the CEO of eHealth Technologies, a leading healthcare company that reduces treatment time by providing on-demand and actionable medical history to nurses.