For as long as healthcare professionals can remember, practices have relied on paper – but that’s all changing. The industry is evolving into an interoperable machine that can exchange information instantaneously, which means digital data is the future.
What does this mean for your practice management? It means a more efficient, cost-effective solution is here. And if you want to stay relevant among your competition, paperless office is not optional – it’s mandatory.
Here are 10 good reasons to say goodbye to paper and hello to digital:
1. Legibility
Physicians and healthcare professionals are notorious for bad handwriting. So it goes without saying that electronic data collection is a victory for the administrators (and patients) struggling to read care notes on a daily basis.
Inputting patient information into your practice management software at the point of care also eliminates the need to enter handwritten information later – saving time for everyone in the workstream.
2. Interoperability
The digital exchange of healthcare information is not the future – it’s already happening. From healthcare practices to patients to referral sources to family physicians and insurance adjusters and adjudicators, health data has the ability to be securely communicated, resulting in faster care and eliminating slow paper trails.
This is just one more reason to go paperless. Storing information digitally means most of the work is done – all that’s left to do is click “submit.”
3. Assembly & Approvals
Claims services like TELUS Health eClaims and HCAI have the ability to process electronically. Not only are you able to take advantage of this through the Universal Office system, but submitting claims electronically is also a time-saver.
By eliminating paper documentation and entering data at the point of care, documents such as claims can be easily pre-populated for submission. And faster submission means faster approvals.
4. More Space
Less paper means you can minimize the use of filing cabinets taking up space in your office – providing more room for patient care.
5. Optimum Efficiency
If there are no filing cabinets to rifle through, that means information will be much easier to find. Imagine accessing the information you need with the click of a button. That’s all you’ll have to do when your data is digital – never again will you spend a day searching for a file that was tucked away in the wrong drawer.
6. Accessibility
When data is electronic, it can be accessed any time, anywhere – as long as you have the permissions to do so. This is a game-changer for those who work remotely, allowing them to check patient files, chart and submit data from anywhere in the world.
7. Compliance
If you’re in the healthcare industry, then you know there is no shortage of compliance regulations that must be followed. These regulations often include mandatory submissions of data, an action always made easier when information is already in electronic form.
An example of this is FSCO’s Annual Information Return (AIR), requiring all service providers licensed by FSCO to submit information about their business practices and internal systems. When this collection of data is already digital, it makes compliance a breeze.
8. Cost
From the obvious costs of printing thousands of pieces of paper (including ink and toner) to the time it takes to manage the massive amount of paperwork generated by a healthcare practice, it’s no surprise that going paperless has a huge impact on your bottom line.
Beyond the costs saved by not using paper, there are huge money benefits to going digital – with time management being one of the biggest. Documenting and filling out claim forms is faster, finding patient information is easier, and keeping data a click away fosters process automation, creating a streamlined work environment for everyone in your practice.
9. Security
If your important information lives on paper, chances are you do not have a consistent backup – whether on a hard drive (which is not always the best idea) or online storage. Even though a disaster is unlikely, the event of one happening could destroy your data arsenal.
When practices go paperless, they open the door to easier ways of backing up information, including online cloud storage – since having files that are already digital makes the process much easier. Going paperless makes securing your data a no-brainer – something that should be a priority for any business.
10. Green
Last, but not least, make your healthcare practice environmentally friendly! Keeping information digital means less resources used to create paper (a process known to release toxic chemicals into air and water sources) and less waste generated.
Going paperless increases your bottom line and decreases your impact on the environment – a win-win for any healthcare practice.
