Smarter Choices for Practice Efficiency

A recent industry study of more than 1,000 healthcare providers showed that running a profitable practice/business is the #1 priority for healthcare providers in 2023, followed by increasing patient satisfaction and improving patient outcomes. 

If running a profitable practice is your goal, explore more efficient ways to work. Implementing processes in your patient intake model that use less paper and eliminate redundant tasks saves both time and money. Those changes can impact the entire patient experience and have a positive boost on both patient and staff satisfaction.

What is Intelligent Intake?

Intelligent Intake by iSalus offers an automated intake process to collect information and payments and is used to streamline patient flow in a practice. It eliminates paperwork in practices, helps providers spend less hours on manual tasks and data processing and more time focusing on patients. 

In one study, a group of U.S. family physicians, challenged by shrinking profit margins, concluded their best opportunity for increasing income and decreasing overhead lies within their own offices. By studying patient flow, they increased efficiency and uncovered hidden capacity and, as a result, generated more visit revenue, cut expenses and improved their patients’ satisfaction, as well as their own.

What could it mean for my practice?

A more efficient intake process cuts costs for paper and assists both front and back office workload – that significantly impacts your practice’s financial bottom line. The days of having patients a clipboard of papers to review and complete before the visit is over. Consider an electronic intake form that patients can complete at home before the visit or from their smartphone. Capture information such as updated registration, COVID screening, consent or other information and it can immediately be uploaded to the patient chart. No paper to print, nothing to transcribe and no time spent scanning or filing.

Intelligent intake also includes options to have patients submit co-pays at the time of service – completely online. This boosts practice cash flow and eliminates costs for paper billing and collection fees. Patients can also update their payment methods online so there are no delays and keep accounts up to date. 

How can it impact patients?

Unpleasant waiting rooms were the single most cited reason that patients would stop returning to a specific facility. Patients get frustrated completing the same form over and over again. They don’t want to sit with a clipboard and a stack of papers to complete. They just want to arrive and see the provider. Using electronic forms helps reduce their wait time and increase their satisfaction. Intelligent Intake helps reduce that waiting time and offers more time for direct patient care. An online payments component as part of an intake process lets patients make copayments at the time of service, eliminating paper bills or necessary follow-up. 

Why should my staff care about this?

How much time is your staff spending on scanning and filing forms? What else could they be spending time on if your practice digitized that process? No one goes into healthcare for the paperwork and patients expect more face-to-face interaction when they come into the practice. Conducting resource-intensive manual transactions costs U.S. health plans and healthcare providers as much as $11 more per transaction when conducted electronically. Intelligent intake frees your staff to spend less hours on manual tasks and data processing and more time focusing on patients. That’s a win-win that makes everyone happier and adds to your bottom line as well. 

What other benefits does it offer?

The increasing prevalence of high-deductible health plans means that patients may bear additional financial responsibility for treatment costs. In the past, patients typically had just a copayment due at the time of an appointment. Today, those high deductibles mean that many patients owe significantly more for care. Because of this, a growing best practice is to charge for and collect these patient payments at the time of service.

Using an intelligent intake process optimizes practice revenue by increasing cash flow. A simplified, electronic method of allowing customers to pay bills and update payment methods online helps your practice increase cash flow, eliminate paper bills, decrease accounts receivable and reduce billing and backend collection costs.  

Learn more about Intelligent Intake and how it can benefit your patients, staff and practice.