Monthly Archives: April 2018

Why Should A Physician Share A Good Relationship With The Patient?

 A physician attends to many patients in a day. But for a patient, the major concerns are about the severity of the illness, the quality of the treatment, etc. Patients expect the physician to diagnose the problem accurately and wants the best care possible. The ultimate goal is to get relieved of the illness as soon as possible. The physician must be interactive with the patient and it is important for the patient to cooperate with the physician to recover soon. So the relationship a physician shares with his patients is very important.

Factors affecting the physician-patient interaction

A patient wants to be taken care of and be able to frequently communicate with the physician. The physician also likes to engage with his patient and make the treatment easier but it is not easy always. So what are the factors that affect the interaction between the patient and the physician?

  • Physicians get busyPhysicians are always busy. Remembering the diagnosis of every single patient is close to impossible. He might forget what the patient is suffering from and will ask the same questions to the patient which can annoy the patient. The physicians being busy may not always follow-up with the patient. Instead, the physician will have a nurse to do that for him.
  • No effective modes to communicate – The system of care is still stuck with paperwork and following up or interacting with the patient is more of a documentation work than inquiring his well-being. There are no effective means to communicate with the patient. Following up manually is always prone to errors and leads to patient dissatisfaction.
  • Unable to reach physicians – Patients may always have to come to the hospital for even small problems as the physician is unavailable over phone calls or messages. It makes it difficult for the patient to get in touch with the physician every now and then.

These factors lead to care fragmentation and affect the health of the patients and also damage the reputation of the provider. Care fragmentation will ultimately lead to frustration between the patient and the provider.

Tips to strengthen physician-patient relationships

Following are five tips to strengthen physician-patient relationships,

  1. Follow-up appointments
  2. Get Feedback
  3. Being available at all times
  4. Staying in touch
  5. Embracing Technology
  • Follow-up appointments – Scheduling follow-up appointments with a patient after discharge is very essential for continued conversation between doctor and patient. It can help in having a check over patient’s health and also improve physician-patient relationships. Follow-up appointments need not be a  face-to-face visit always. The physicians’ can follow-up with their patients through audio or video calls eliminating the effects of poor communication in healthcare. A software to manage appointments and patient demographics can be a very useful physician communication strategy.
  • Get feedback – A lesser known tip for strengthening physician-patient relationships is by getting feedback from the patients. Feedbacks can be taken through a patient survey on the quality of care and treatment, phone calls, personal conversation with the patients, etc. Feedbacks can be useful in improving patient-physician relationship, knowing how good the service is and the areas for improvement.
  • Being available at all times – The physician must be available over calls or messages. This will make it easy for the patients to reach out to the physicians at the time of need. A nurse can also assist and bring it to the doctor’s attention if required.
  • Staying in touch – Though there are no appointments scheduled with the patient, it is always good to have a team of nurses following up with such patients occasionally. This will make the patient feel good about the physician and thus the patient-physician relationship will improve.
  • Embracing Technology – Technology is simplifying healthcare. With the help of a software, scheduling follow-up appointments, improving network connections, getting feedback from the patients, marketing a hospital, etc are made easy.

What HealthViewX solution offers?

HealthViewX Care Management Solution can help the physicians to check on their patients’ health even after hospital discharge. It results in effective communication within the practice and also between the provider and the patient thus improving the physician-patient relationship. The following are the key aspects of HealthViewX Care Management Solution.

  • Care plans to enable remote care – A provider can create a care plan for a patient depending on the vitals, treatments, measurements, etc that need to be tracked. The patient-centric application helps in logging data for the vitals specified in the care plan. If needed the care plan can also be printed.
  • Customizable dashboards to suit the need – Dashboards comprising of graphs and tables show a comprehensive data of the number of patients in different care plans depending on the patient diagnosis.
  • Scheduler to keep track of the appointments – An inbuilt scheduler keeps track of the appointments and sends timely reminders to both the patient and the provider. The chances of missing out an appointment are very less.
  • Audio and video calling features – HealthViewX Care Management solution support inbuilt audio and video calling features which help in connecting with the patients for follow-ups.
  • Patient-reported data – Patients can record data for all attributes in the care plan. Summary graphs and table data helps the providers in monitoring the patient vitals. The patient records can be anytime printed in pdf or excel report form. 
  • Health device integration – HealthViewX Care Management solution can integrate with any wearable device like Fitbit, apple watch, etc. Hence the patients need not waste time in logging data in the application if they are already using wearables.

HealthViewX Care Management Solution provides real-time communication between the patients and the providers thus enhancing the relationship between them. Schedule a demo with us to know HealthViewX HIPAA compliant Care Management solution better.

Why is Documenting A Medical Referral Not Easy For A Community Clinic?

How does referral works in a Community Clinic?

Community Health Centers (CHCs) are private, non-profit organizations that directly or indirectly (through contracts and cooperative agreements) provide primary health services and related services to residents of a defined geographic area that is medically underserved. CHCs are high referral outbound centers, who send out a number of referrals in a day. A Community  Health System has many PCPs who attend to numerous patients with different health problems. The PCP initiates referrals when the patient needs an additional diagnosis from an imaging center or a specialist practice. The following are the steps through which a referral flows,

  1. Referral Initiation – The referring provider gives the details of the patient and diagnosis to the central referral coordinating team. A referral coordinator will study the demographics of the patient and the diagnosis required.
  2. Insurance Pre-authorization – If the patient has an insurance coverage, the referral coordinator will validate the same. This step is required to find out which imaging center or specialist practice will cover the medical expenses.
  3. Finding the right provider – Depending on the treatment required, insurance coverage, patient’s convenience, the referral coordinator will narrow down the search and find the right receiving provider for the referral.
  4. Sending out the referral – After finding the right provider, patient information and the diagnosis details are shared while referring. The physicians can share the information via phone, fax, email, etc depending on the source that suits the receiving provider.

Medical referral history documentation

Referral history gives details of what has happened with the referral till date. The referral history is equally important to both the referring and receiving providers. Unfortunately, the receiving provider maintains this history through paper-based forms or EHR and it is not easily accessible to the referring provider. Documenting a medical referral is quite a challenge for the provider who initiates the referral. So what factors make it so tedious and challenging?

  • Physicians get busy – After the referral is initiated, the referring provider gets busy with other appointments and forgets about the referral until the receiving provider gives updates. Not to forget the receiving provider is also a specialist or from an imaging center who will also be busy. The receiving provider or the patient fails to communicate with the referring provider regarding the progress of the referral which makes it difficult to document the referral.
  • Lack of effective modes of communication – There is no effective platform to share patient’s sensitive data or communicate with the referring or receiving provider. The physicians are not available over calls or messages which makes the situation worse. There is a need for a standard HIPAA compliant application that the referring and receiving providers can use to share information which helps in referral documentation.
  • Manual effort making the referral process tedious – The referral process has manual intervention at every stage. This frustrates the providers and the referral coordinating team. Giving timely updates to the referring provider regarding a referral is too much of effort for the receiving provider. Documenting the referral manually becomes a challenge.

Why document a medical referral?

  • Patient’s need – The patient may come to the clinic at any time looking for the medical history of the referral. At that point, the clinic should be able to give the patient the medical referral history. So documenting a referral becomes a necessary process.
  • Clinic’s records for future reference – It is important for a Community Neighbourhood Health Center to maintain a history of its patient’s demographics and referral records. If the patient comes back to the clinic with an illness, these records will help in understanding the patient better and giving the best treatment the patient needs.
  • Direct future referrals – A history of medical referral records will help the physician in figuring out who responds quickly and who does not. The next time the physician sends out a referral, he/she will choose the most responsive and the most suitable receiving provider for the referral.

Information Technology to aid Community Health Systems

Information Technology is transforming healthcare to a great extent. Documenting a medical referral is easy for a healthcare based software application like HealthViewX. HealthViewX Patient Referral Management solution simplifies the referral process by the following steps,

  1. Referral Initiation – The patient demographics and diagnosis required are already in the application. The referral coordinator can create the referral through a simple three step form which includes insurance pre-authorization, finding the appropriate receiving provider with the help of  “smart search”, etc. The receiving provider is notified of the referral.
  2. Referral status and timeline view – With the status, a referral is tagged to, the referring provider can get to know in what stage the referral is. A timeline view shows a history of stages through which the referral has progressed.
  3. Referral and timeline view reports – The timeline view and the referral analytics data can be generated as a report in any form chosen.
  4. Referral closure and feedback – If the referral is completed, the status can be changed to closed. A feedback form is generated for the patient and the receiving provider. This can help the referring provider in making the referral process better next time.

HealthViewX Patient Referral Management solution smoothes out the referral process and reduces the burden of the referring and the receiving ends. Do you want to know more about HealthViewX Patient Referral Management solution? Schedule a demo with us.

Community Clinics Missing Out On The Progress Of A Referral – Know More!

What are Community Health Centers and what they do?

Community Health Center (CHC) in the United States is a non-profit entity comprising of clinical care providers, that operate at comprehensive federal standards. The care providers in CHC are a part of the country’s health care safety net, which is defined as a group of health centers, hospitals, and providers who are willing to provide services to the nation’s needy crowd, thus ensuring that comprehensive care is available to all, regardless of income or insurance status. CHC is a dominant model for providing integrated primary care and public health services to low-income and underserved population. There are two types of CHCs, one receives federal funding under Section 330 of Public Health Service Act and the other meets all requirements applicable to federally funded health centers and is supported through state and local grants. To receive federal funding, CHCs must meet the following requirements.

  • Be located in a federally designated medically underserved area (MUA) or serve medically underserved populations (MUP)
  • Provide comprehensive primary care
  • Adjust charges for health services on a sliding fee schedule according to patient income
  • Be governed by a community board of which a majority of members are patients at the CHC

Patient Referral Program in a Community Health Center

Community Health Centers constitute Primary Care Providers (PCP) who serve the underserved population. CHCs are high outbound referral setups i.e they send out numerous referrals. A patient visits the clinic when he/she is suffering from an illness. Depending on the severity, the physician might refer the patient to an imaging center for further diagnosis or to a specialist practice for advanced treatments.

Any Community Health Center will have a dedicated referral coordination team to send out referrals and take care of the community care coordination program. With the help of the patient demographics and diagnosis details available, the referral coordinator will go about doing the insurance preauthorization and finding the right imaging center or specialty practice for the patient. After that, the coordinator will create a referral that includes the details of patient demographics and the required diagnosis. Then the referral is sent to the relevant imaging center or specialty practice.

Challenges faced

The referral creation involves tedious manual work due to the following reasons.

  • Finding the right specialist/imaging center – The number of imaging centers and specialist practices is increasing day-by-day. It takes a lot of time and effort for the referral coordinator to narrow down the referral coordinator’s search and find the right one.
  • Time Spent – As the referrals are handled manually, a referring coordinator spends about half-an-hour to one-hour for a creating referral on an average and even more time in following up the same.
  • No Updates –  After a referral is sent, both the referring and the receiving providers get busy. It is not possible for both of them to be updated on the referral progress. So the specialist/imaging center and the patient fail to update the clinic on the progress of the referral. This results in open referral loops.

Why are referral updates important to a clinic?

  1. The patient’s well being – Any physician would always want to check on his/her patients’ health. So it is essential for a provider to want to know if the receiving provider accepted the referral, scheduled an appointment with the patient, the patient recovery status, or how severe is the illness, etc.
  2. Referral loop closure– Open referrals are a result of the referring provider not getting to know the referral’s progress. The ultimate aim of a referral process is to give the patient better treatment. Closing a referral loop is very important because it indirectly proves that the patient was taken care of.
  3. Data AnalyticsPCPs require concrete data of how many referrals were converted to an appointment by a specialty care or an imaging center. It will help in analyzing who responds quickly and to whom the PCP can direct future referrals.
  4. Referring to the right person – Depending on the progress of the referral and the patient’s feedback, the physician can get to know how good or bad the referral process has been. This will help the physician in knowing to whom he can refer and to whom he should not.
  5. Schedule follow-up appointments – After the referral is done, the physician has to schedule an appointment for the patient. For eg: If the physician is referring his patient to an imaging for X-ray, the physician must be notified once the test is done so that he can schedule an appointment and give treatment to his patient depending on the results. Structured appointments scheduled in a well-managed referral system is a constant source of new patient revenue.

Be updated about referrals with the HealthViewX solution

The major problem with a Community Clinic not getting updates is that everything is manual. A software solution can solve this problem quite easily. HealthViewX Patient Referral Management solution enables creating a referral in three simple steps thus providing a successful referral program. After the referral is created, it can be tracked with help of the status. Both the referring and receiving providers will be notified of the appointments, test results, treatment recommendations, etc. The system can integrate with EMR/EHR and can also coordinate between the referring and the receiving sides. Any referral has a timeline view which is common to both the receiving and the referring providers. In the timeline view, history of the referral can be seen for eg: notes related to the patient’s health, previous status of the referral, etc. Documents attachment and status change can also be done at any time of the referral process. HealthViewX Patient Referral Management solution can always keep you updated on the progress of the referral thus simplifying the referral process and helps in closing the referral loop.

HealthViewX Patient Referral Management solution helps the referring provider to track the referral progress. Schedule a demo with us and our patient referral management experts will guide you through our HIPAA compliant solution.

All That You Need To Know About Patient Readmission Rates

What is Patient Readmission?

Patient readmission happens when a discharged patient is again admitted to the hospital within a specified period. CMS used different time frames for research purposes, the most common being 30-days, 90-days and 1-year readmission. They define patient readmission as “An admission to an acute care hospital within 30 days of discharge from the same or another acute care hospital”. It uses an “all-cause” definition, meaning that the cause of the readmission need not be related to the cause of the initial hospitalization. The CMS set the time frame to 30 days because readmission during this time is a result of the care given at the hospital and how well they coordinated the discharges.

Why does Patient Readmission happen?

Before knowing why readmission happens, there are two terminologies that we must know to understand it better.

Index Hospitalization – The original hospital stay i.e when a patient gets admitted for a treatment in a hospital is “index admission”.

Hospital Readmission Rates – The rate at which a hospital readmitted its patients is a “hospital readmission rate”.  In other terms, it is an outcome or a quality measure of care given by health systems.

Here are the top four reasons for patient readmissions,

  1. Importance of paying heed to the physician – Mr. Hayden got admitted to a hospital for a knee surgery. The physician advised him to take complete rest. He did not listen to the physician and strained himself resulting in severe leg pain. Now Mr.Hayden is then re-admitted to the hospital. In this case, the patient should have paid attention to his physician’s advice.
  2. Recovery Instructions – Dr. Adams is a cardiologist. He performed an open heart surgery on one of his patients. Since Dr. Adams was busy with many other surgeries on the same day he couldn’t give the patient instructions regarding post-surgery clinical exercises. He entrusts a nurse with the job. The nurse forgets to instruct the patient about the prescribed exercises. The patient then gets readmitted to the hospital complaining of chest pain. It is the responsibility of the specialist to give the required instructions to his patient and help them recover quicker.
  3. Communication between the patient and the specialist – Mr. Mark gets admitted to the hospital for ulcer treatment. The patient fails to give his complete health problems to the specialist. The specialist does not probe much and gives the usual treatment. Mark is fine for a week after discharge but is then re-admitted for the same problem. It is important for the patient to share all his problems with the specialist and it is the duty of the specialist to understand the complete health history of the patient.
  4. Continuous care to the patient after discharge – Dr. George is an Orthopedic specialist. His patient is suffering from arthritis. The patient needs continuous monitoring and care. The specialist is mostly not reachable over the phone for doubts. Here arises the need for technology, a software that can help both the patient and the specialist in continuous assessment.

Patient readmission risks

Readmission rates decide the quality of care given by the physicians. The CMS introduced the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010 penalizing the health systems having higher than expected readmission rates through the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program. They specifically designed the program for incentivizing hospitals that had higher readmission rates of 20% in 2010. CMS reduced the reimbursements of the hospitals depending on the rate of the breach which was effective in reducing the readmission rates by 2% in 2013.

Ways to Reduce Patient Readmission Rates

A study presented by the Harvard Business Review found that on average, a hospital can reduce its readmission rates by 5% if it simply prioritized communication with patients while also complying with evidence-based standards of care. The following steps are a great initiative in cutting down the readmission rates.

  • Scheduling follow-up appointments After a patient gets discharged it is essential to get in touch with him to inquire about his well-being. The appointments need not be face-to-face always. The physicians can conduct appointments through audio or video calls or sometimes even through messaging or e-mails. It will help the physician in knowing how well the patient is after the treatment or surgery.
  • Long-term relationships with patients – Patient engagement is the key to reduce patient readmission rates. Rehabilitation programs, good nursing team, home care, wellness programs etc can improve patient engagement and thus reduce readmissions.
  • Technology to play a vital role – A software to monitor the patients continuously can really help in solving the readmission rates problem in a cost-effective way. It also provides many other advantages and reduces manual work.

How can technology help in curbing readmission risks?

Information Technology is everywhere, so why not in healthcare? HealthViewX Care Management Solution helps the providers in monitoring and providing care to patients anywhere. It allows the provider to create a care plan for the patient. The care plan comprises many vitals, activities, treatments etc. The provider can select the appropriate ones and create a care plan. The patient who has a mobile application gets notified about the care plan. He can go about recording data for the vitals or measurements given. Both the patient and the provider can view the data in form of graphs or tables which will help the provider to keep an eye on the patient’s vitals. The following features help the hospitals in monitoring the patients easily and thus reducing the readmission risks.

  1. Electronic Care Plans – Care plans to monitor patient’s vitals, measurements, etc. If required,  it can also be printed and handed over to the patient.
  2. Patient Reported Data – Patients can record data for all attributes in the care plan. Summary graphs and table data helps the provider in monitoring the patient’s vitals. The physicians can print reports at any time in pdf or excel form.
  3. Health Device Integration – HealthViewX Care Management Solution can integrate with any wearable device like Fitbit, Apple watch, etc. Hence the patients need not waste time in logging data in the application if they are already using wearables.
  4. Follow-up Appointments – The solution enables to schedule follow-up appointments and sends reminders to both the patient and the provider. It also has inbuilt audio and video calling features to support such meetings.

HealthViewX Care Management Solution offers a range of advantages and lessens the chances of a patient getting readmitted. To know more about our solution, schedule a demo with our expert team who will guide you through the process. Schedule a demo with us to learn more.

Referral Management Software Vs EHR Rollouts

Referral Management is quite a laborious process. For an enterprise hospital, managing referrals is even more tedious than a Community Clinic. These large multi-specialty set-ups are formed by joint ventures or mergers or acquisitions. The bigger the network, the more complex is the enterprise medical referral management. EHR/EMR implementation and maintenance is the biggest challenge of all.

Now, what is an EHR/EMR? And why is managing referrals through EHR/EMR system a huge problem?

Electronic Health Records

Electronic Health Records (EHR) represent the patient’s chart data in digitized forms. EHRs are real-time, patient-centered records that make information available instantly and securely to authorized users. An EHR has the patient’s clinical data including demographics, progress notes, problems, medications, vital signs, past medical history, immunizations, laboratory data and radiology reports over a period of time.

Pros of Electronic Health Records

  • Financial Incentives – Medical providers who convert patient records into electronic ones get financial incentives from CMS.
  • Speedy process – With an EHR system, doctors can immediately place orders for imaging or laboratory work. This reduces the chance of an error occurring because the handwriting of the doctor is difficult to decipher.
  • Unlimited access to medical records – With the help of a patient portal connected to the EHR system, both patient and provider can access medical records very easily.

Impacts of EHR on the existing referral workflow

  • Easy management of patient data – As mentioned earlier, Electronic Health Records (EHR) are digitized forms of patient’s chart data. It helps is managing all patient-related information like medications, vitals, diagnostic reports, medical history, etc.
  • e-messaging between providersIn order to attest referral information, telephone tag between providers is common. It is a time-consuming process. With EHR software, physicians can e-message across practices. One situation that benefits in particular from e-messaging is referrals. Rather than playing telephone tag to get an appointment scheduled, the physician electronically sends a message to schedule the appointment.

Patient Referral Management Software

Large Enterprise hospitals have implemented an EHR/EMR system because it helps them manage their patient data securely. Providers face difficulties in managing paper-based patient records. So EHR implementation is indeed a boon to them. Yes, indeed EHR/EMRs are doing a great job but are they doing enough for patient referral management?

The obvious question now will be  “Why HealthViewX?”.

  • Inbound and Outbound Referrals – HealthViewX Referral Management Solution can integrate with both the receiving and referring end. For inbound referrals, it helps in channelizing various sources into one single queue. In case of outbound referrals, it facilitates integration with the existing system to read the patient data and send out referrals.
  • Referral Timeline – Any referral has a timeline, to capture the progress of the referral. It is common to the referring and receiving provider. A referral will be mapped to a status which helps in tracking it better. For e.g. – If a patient does not show up for the appointment, the status of the referral can be changed to no-show and an appropriate reason can also be given. With the help of a referral timeline, the providers can always be aware of what is going on with the referral.
  • Workflow and Task Management – A workflow can be defined on how the referral flow must be(business rules). Tasks can be created to manage referrals by assigning it to the respective person.
  • Improved communication – HealthViewX Referral Management Solution supports messaging and calling features for the referring and the receiving providers to stay connected.
  • Data Management – The solution is HIPAA compliant and enables secure data exchange of all patient-related documents.
  • Seamless Integration – The solution can seamlessly integrate with any EMR/EHR/RIS or Third Party application thus providing minimal disruption in the existing referral flow.
  • Referral Data Consolidation – The consolidated data regarding the referrals and the referral history of any patient can be printed as a hard copy at any time in pdf/excel.
  • Smart Search – HealthViewX Referral Management solution has a smart search facility that helps in finding the right provider for the treatment required.
  • Referral Data Analytics – Referral data-centric dashboard gives clear figures regarding the number of referrals flowing in and out, a number of referrals in various status, patient follow-ups, etc.

HealthViewX Referral Management solution helps in building a secure referral network in no time. Our expert team will guide you in changing to a Patient Referral Management Software with minimal effort. Schedule a demo with us to know more about our solution. Schedule a demo with us to learn more.

Electronic Referral Management To Track Inbound Referrals Effectively

In a year, 15 billion faxes are sent out for referrals in the US. Referrals can be through fax, online forms, direct messaging, email, virtual print, direct walk-ins, etc but the maximum patient referrals are sent through fax. An imaging center or specialty practice or a dental center is a high referral inbound setup. Thousands of referrals flow in and they need an effective referral tracking system to manage the inbound referral traffic.

Let us consider an example to understand how an imaging center is managing the inbound referral traffic, Mr. Samuel is suffering from ear pain. The patient consults his Primary Care Provider who asks him to get an X-ray done. The PCP sends out a fax to the imaging center that contains the patient’s information and the diagnostic tests to be taken. At the imaging center, a referral coordinator has to receive, accept and process the request. The referral coordinator has to manually key in and create a referral, include all the patient information into the EMR/EHR/RIS. The referral coordinator takes around half an hour to process a referral request. The rate of processing is very slow. The referral coordinator finds it difficult to process even 20 referral faxes in a day. It results in piling up of faxes waiting to be processed. The referral coordinator is at loss trying to figure out why he/she is not able to close the referral loop. Patient referral leakage also becomes imminent.

Imaging Centers under constant pressure

An imaging center or a specialty practice gets numerous referrals in a day through phone calls, email, fax, patient walk-in etc. In most of the cases, it is through traditional fax. It is handled by a referral coordinator who redirects the referrals to the respective internal sections. They have an EMR/EHR/RIS in which the patient details will be taken if already present or they will have to key in all the details in the fax regarding the patient and the diagnosis required. As the number of faxes is piling, the time and effort required for them will be more. They are at loss in knowing how many referrals are done and missed. Entering the patient information and processing is a mammoth task and becomes tedious for them to manage manually.

Consequences of a slow referral network

  • The imaging center or specialty practice loses its revenue when referrals are not processed in time.
  • Providers stop referring the center thereby harming its reputation.
  • Patients may be severely ill and must be treated immediately. The waiting time may affect their health.

Problems faced

  • Handling many referrals manually in a short period of time.
  • Varied sources of referral make it difficult to get a comprehensive data about the referrals flowing in.
  • The time spent in processing a hard copy fax referral is more.
  • The information about the referral is limited and makes it difficult for the referral coordinator to proceed with the diagnosis.
  • It takes a lot of time for the center to contact the referring provider in case of doubts.

HealthViewX Patient Referral Management solution at your aid

Patient Referral Management is complicated not only by the different sources but also by trying to manage all the referrals manually. The current referral management is no way close to the increasing demands of the referral process. Its inability to communicate between the referring and the receiving ends makes it slow and non-feasible. Relying on EHR/EMR/RIS for managing referrals makes it a costly affair and does not fulfill the optimal requirements of healthcare information technology for referral workflow management.

Electronic Referral Management has been creating buzz for quite a time. Many applications are looking to solve the referral process issues. Before choosing one, the following aspects must be considered.

  • Simplify data sources – Capable of handling numerous referrals from various sources and bringing it to a platform from where it can be processed.
  • Improve Efficiency – Closing the referral loop on time thus preventing patient referral leakage. This will improve the efficiency that is the number of referrals will be processed in a short span of time.
  • Data security – Sensitive patient data must be secured and protected.
  • Data Analytics – Complete analytics of the referrals flowing in, processed, missed etc.
  • Timeline View – To know the history of the referral and to what status it is attached to.
  • Integration with scheduler – To schedule appointments for the patients.
  • HIPAA Compliant – Secure data exchange of patient sensitive documents.

Any imaging center or specialty practice receives a number of referral requests in a day. The referrals usually have an attachment in pdf form which will be noneditable. They will have a form that has to be filled out with the details given in the referral. HealthViewX Patient  Referral Tracking System comes to play here. Using Optical Character Recognition(OCR) the information from the referral will be read and the form is prefilled with the required details. Now the referral coordinator can just validate the details and create a referral and assign it for further action. The referral information can also be channelized based on the request of the user for eg: Two referrals forms can be filled in if it concerns people in different locations. The solution can be integrated with EMR/EHR/RIS and can write the updated information back the system used by them.

Problems Addressed

  • Single Referral Workflow Queue Consolidation – Fax, Phone, Email, Website form referrals are captured, managed and monitored in a single interface. This helps in managing the referrals better.
  • OCR (Optical Character Recognition) – Helps in avoiding manual errors and reduces the referral processing time for referrals through eFax.
  • Timeline View – Both the center and the PCP can view the timeline data of the patient in which the referral history is present. Documents and notes can be attached anytime for one another’s reference.
  • To and fro Communication – At any time of the referral process, the PCP and the center can communicate with the help of the inbuilt secure messaging and voice call applications.
  • Referral Data Consolidation – The consolidated data regarding the referrals and the referral history of any patient can be printed as a hard copy at any time in pdf/excel.
  • Secure Data Management – HealthViewX Patient Referral Management is HIPAA compliant. All patient-related documents are managed securely.
  • Referral Analytics – Helps in tracking the number of referrals and gives complete information about the referrals processed, missed, scheduled etc with the help of a Referral Data-centric Dashboard.

HealthViewX Patient Referral Management solution is on par with the current referral network requirements of an imaging center or specialty practice. Are you an imaging center or a specialist practice looking to track your inbound referrals very effectively? To know about HealthViewX Patient Referral Management System in detail schedule a demo with our team.