Staffing Issues in Healthcare

For people who don’t live a day in the life of a medical professional, we don’t see the behind-the-scenes efforts that go into patient care. Clinical notes, transcriptions, patient intake forms, insurance records – this is just a SMALL list of the documentation involved in caring for a patient. Add in HIPPA regulations, fear of hackers holding information ransom, time-consuming records processes along with staff shortages and the patient isn’t the only one with a massive headache!

Medical providers didn’t go into the field to manage paper records, they went into the field for their passion to take care of people. However, much of their time is involved with creating, finding, reviewing, and sharing (hopefully in a HIPPA compliant way) patient information.

Smart Business Magazine previously reported that the average US employee wastes more than 2 hours per week finding, sharing, and storing documents. What would 2 more hours with a patient do for your organization? By converting records to a digital document management system, you can reduce the time your staff spends on records management, giving them more time to do more meaningful tasks for your patients.

Think about how your staff currently finds and shares a document. This could be a request from a doctor, patient, or third parties such as an auditor or health department surveyor.

Finding

If you’re managing records in paper format, they have to physically go to where the documents are stored, search through the cabinets, boxes, or shelves to find the patient folder. Then, within the folder, spend time manually sifting through the pages to find what they need. If the patient has been with you for a long time, that folder could be quite large!

Sharing

Once the document has been found, how does your staff then share that with someone who is not in the building? If sending by fax, think about the amount of time it takes to dial, scan, and send the pages. For the receiver of the fax, does it easily get lost amongst their pile of faxed records? Does the fax come through legibly? Are they scanning and sending via email and, if so, are you sure your email system is HIPPA compliant?

Solution

Now – imagine the ability to easily search for a specific record from any electronic device, find it within seconds, and create a secure, HIPPA compliant password-protected share link that can be sent via email, chat, or text. Instead of taking 30-60 minutes to find and share that record, it can be done in less than five.