How to Digitize Your Medical Practice?

With the advent of technology, everything in the world has become digitized one way or the other. The digitization of the workplace has made way for efficiency, competency and seamlessness. Work has become quicker and fast-flowing as computers and software have been brought into the mix, making procedures quicker, information more accessible, and communication channels direct and obstructed. Digitizing medical practices has picked up steam in the context of the worldwide pandemic as the workforce has been pushed to the confines of homes, relying on technology for work. Softwares like EMR for medical practices, medical billing software and tools like websites and SEO for healthcare have become increasingly important. These are some ways you can digitize medical practices; they will be discussed in further detail below.

Benefits of Digitizing Your Medical Practice

There are several advantages to digitizing your medical practice, including better doctor-patient coordination, automated administrative tasks, and enhanced data security.

Better doctor-patient coordination: Digitisation allows you to keep a record of the patients and maintain their history all in one place. You can store information on a cloud and back it up so that you don’t lose it. Medical history is critical for patient visits and emergency situations. If your data is digitized, you can access it at the touch of a button. There is also less likelihood of your data going missing, as is the case with physical files, which can easily be misplaced or lost.

Automated Administrative Tasks: Administrative tasks include providing information, entering patient notes and details onto electronic health record systems. Many doctors spend time on administrative tasks instead of attending to patients because the task requires manual labor. The system is thus prone to errors and a waste of time because it takes up a significant chunk of a doctor’s precious and limited time. Digitizing administrative tasks will allow doctors to focus on their work. Task automation through the use of advanced artificial intelligence can perform these menial tasks as well as complex ones, such as providing prescription advice and reminders. The integration of AI into medical practices can make practices and physicians much more productive.

Data Security: Physical files are risk-prone. They can be lost, misplaced or damaged due to unmitigated disasters like earthquakes and flooding or even short-circuiting. Electronic medical records for medical practices keep patient data safe and secure, as they can only be accessed by authorized personnel and kept safe with appropriate measures against data breaches.

Digitizing a medical practice:

There are several ways you can digitize your medical practice:

Start with a website: You must put together an efficient and fast custom website for your medical practice. The website must be designed to have a quick loading time – between 8 to 15 seconds, and have optimized loading and views on smartphones. It must also be SEO optimized, working in SEO for healthcare with keywords for services, what your practice is about and the location forefront and center. Content should be unique and original but also readable. Similarly, you must incorporate appropriate photos and tags, and the pages should not be fussy at all. Websites are an excellent way to put yourself on the map, making you visible to patients. It is also convenient for patients to get their information from one source instead of having to call the practice for information that can easily be found on the web. Your website can expand beyond simple information as well. If you use appropriate software, you can create an online portal for your patients where they can book a slot or request an appointment with the clinic.

Digitize medical records: You can opt to introduce an electronic medical record system. EMR systems automate the documentation, storage and retrieval of patient history and records. You can opt for a variety of software like Advanced MD or TheraNest. Different systems afford different perks. EMRs have detailed scheduling interfaces, customizable features and can be used for prescription tracking. Digitizing records is one of the easiest ways to digitize your medical practice, and it is well worth the investment and effort to learn new software. EMR systems hold special value in the context of the pandemic where physical access to office spaces and file cabinets is limited.

Integration with other systems and other physicians: Cloud-based software has made it easy to share things. You can use it to interact with physicians from other practices, send over information to referrals at the click of a button without putting confidentiality at risk. In addition, when choosing a technology, you opt for software that can be integrated easily with one another. This will create a seamless and uninterrupted channel for work.

Data Protection and HIPAA: Protect your patient’s data via high levels of encryption and anonymization. You can use HIPAA-compliant software like Data Dazzler to protect data.

Train your staff accordingly: You need to give your staff adequate training sessions to get them acquainted with the software in order to ensure a smooth transition.

Medical invoicing systems: Opt for clear and transparent medical invoicing systems in order to establish clear track records and avoid denials as well as confusion in terms of payments.