How to Spend More Time with Patients This Year

With the rate of physician burnout among providers at an all-time high, it is incredibly important that providers find ways to refocus the time of their team on patients. Most physicians will tell you that they pursued a career in medicine to help people and work with patients, not to spend hours documenting on a computer or building practice revenue. While those are important aspects of their job, there is a way to complete those time-consuming tasks while also being able to spend more time with patients. When it comes time to spending more time with patients, the right Electronic Health Record can make a huge difference. Using a quality, all-in-one EHR will boost patient engagement, maximize your time, and help your physicians focus on face-to-face patient interactions.

How an EHR Can Help You Spend More Time with Patients

1) Optimize Your Workflow

Optimizing your workflow so that your physicians spend as little time on their computer as possible, while still protecting the integrity of their work, is essential in order for them to spend more time with patients. A quality Electronic Health Record offers your team workflow efficiency tools that promote quick and accurate documentation, improved claims processing, and efficient communication.

With the right EHR, your physicians can spend more time with patients by using custom documenting templates, customizable dashboards, visual vitals tracking, electronic prescriptions and more. Each one of these features enables the physician to do what they must on their computer as quickly as possible while simultaneously improving their clinical decision-making process and the integrity of their documentation.

2) Implement Telehealth

Telehealth is another great tool for helping physicians spend more time with patients in 2023. Telehealth visits promote higher levels of patient engagement by making medical care more accessible and convenient. This video visit alternative allows physicians to visit with more patients in one day who might have avoided an in-person in the past.

Telehealth helps patients who live farther away from your office to stay regularly engaged with their physician without overextending travel costs or time off of work, giving them a more positive healthcare experience. Telehealth also helps your physicians spend more time with patients who might not be able to make it into their office due to the nature of their condition(s) or the business of their daily life.

3) Use a Quality Patient Portal

The patient portal promotes record-setting levels of patient engagement that truly help physicians spend more time with patients than in the past. With the patient portal, patients can easily communicate with their physician in-between visits. By asking questions, discussing test results, or completing an e-visit, the patient portal promotes a better relationship between patients and physicians. By giving your patients a clear avenue to access their physician, they know that their doctors truly care about their wellbeing and are more likely to engage in regularly scheduled care.

4) Digital Patient Intake

Digital patient intake offers a behind the scenes solution for getting physicians to spend more time with patients. Digital patient intake involves the patient completing intake information prior to entering the office. During this time, patients update insurance information and triple-check their PHI to make sure providers have what they need. The process of digital patient intake has a drastic impact on wait times in the office, helping physicians spend more time with patients on average.

To learn more about how your practice can optimize its workflow and spend more time with patients, click here.