Did you know healthcare documentation can account for 25% to 41% of providers’ work? In order to focus more time on their patients during appointments, many providers have to complete documentation outside of office hours. With an increase in healthcare provider turnover rates and shortages, agencies must implement tools that boost employee morale, eliminate inefficiencies, and simplify workflows.
Utilizing technology that automates mundane work and makes information easily accessible to your staff will improve the patient experience, increase employee satisfaction, and lead to greater reimbursements. This blog will explain how the right technology can streamline healthcare documentation, optimize your workflows and save your staff loads of work— bringing the focus back to patient care.
Recognize documentation inefficiencies
Documentation can be a tedious and time-consuming practice for several reasons:
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Inefficient processes: Traditional documentation methods, such as paper-based records or non-specialized electronic systems, can be inefficient and prone to errors. This can result in additional time spent on corrections and updates, further exacerbating the tediousness of documentation.
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Detail-oriented work: Recording information on a patient’s medical history, assessment findings, treatment plans, progress notes, etc. is very tedious. Ensuring the accuracy and completeness of this information takes time and effort.
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Regulatory requirements: Strict documentation standards set by regulatory bodies, insurance providers, and other stakeholders make accuracy critical. Ensuring compliance with these requirements adds to the complexity and time-consuming nature of the documentation process.
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Interruption to patient care: The time spent on documentation can detract from the time providers have to engage in direct patient care. This can be frustrating for providers and patients.
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Administrative burden: In addition to their clinical responsibilities, providers often have to manage various administrative tasks, such as billing, scheduling, and coordinating with other healthcare providers. Documentation adds to this workload, further contributing to the time-consuming nature of the task.
Improve visits with mobile app documentation
Your field staff is constantly on the move, which can make documentation processes inefficient and cumbersome without the proper technology in place. Implementing HIPAA-compliant mobile software for optimized documentation processes enables nurses to access and enter crucial information anytime, anywhere. This is not only more efficient and highly favored by field staff, but it also allows agencies to reduce equipment expenses. With the right mobile app documentation solution your staff can use speech-to-text to make inputting data even easier. Making it as simple as possible to chart anywhere, anytime will give your staff more time to focus on their patients and alleviate the tedious nature of documenting every visit.
Ensure compliance with integrated EVV
Capturing Electronic Visit Verification (EVV), clocking in and out, and completing all documentation in a single, unified platform significantly boosts employee productivity and ensures compliance. The advantage of a fully integrated EVV system within your EMR is that your staff doesn’t have to do any extra work. The software seamlessly captures time, geo-location, and other essential information during its standard operation, eliminating the need for additional tasks or training. This is one of the best ways to improve your team’s efficiency while maintaining the highest standards of compliance and patient care.
Streamline authorizations with templates
Constantly pulling and attaching multiple documents every time authorization is required is far from ideal. By creating templates, your staff can assign documents to specific authorizations, so when that auth is needed, the documents are already ready to go. This makes sending auths more efficient, alleviates the repetitive work, and allows your staff to focus on more pressing tasks.
Get paid faster with automated billing
Accurate financial documentation, including claims, account receivables, and payroll, is one of the most essential aspects of your agency. Automated billing allows you to improve cash flow, simplify processes, and streamline billing workflows. With the right software, your agency can automate claims creation, AR tracking, Electronic Remits, visit verification, payroll, and more. This reduces tedious, manual work and administrative costs, as these highly-detailed tasks can lead to costly mistakes. Instead of spending time correcting billing errors, your staff can ensure accuracy and remain productive.
Capture data for value-based reimbursement
A Value-Based Agreement allows providers to partner with a payor to measure metrics and receive payments based on positive outcomes. Such outcomes are notoriously hard to measure in pediatric and long-term care populations. Medicare-based EMR systems will build workflows and data reporting around the HHVBP Model to comply with CMS requirements. Non-Medicare companies using these systems will have to manipulate data designed around OASIS and HHCAHPS, which are rarely the basis for measuring Medicaid patient populations. That being said, implementing software that specializes in State Medicaid and MCO compliance will put you at the forefront of Value-Based care models. When the entire platform is designed to capture relevant data, you are set up for success to leverage it for better outcomes.
See what’s possible with Cubhub
Agencies that embrace technology and strive to optimize their workflows have powerful growth potential to unlock. The right technology enables home healthcare agencies to automate mundane tasks, streamline visits, and accomplish more work — taking loads of time-consuming tasks off employees’ shoulders.
Cubhub can reduce the time and effort required for documentation, streamline everything from admissions to collections with powerful automation tools, and give your staff more time to focus on direct patient care and improving treatment outcomes.