Is your practice having a hard time trying to reduce patient wait times? The combination of the right technology can help your organization reduce patient wait times and improve the patient experience. Long patient wait times have historically had a negative impact on the experience as well as your practice’s productivity levels. Below are 4 ways that providers can reduce patient wait times and improve the patient experience.
How to Reduce Patient Wait Times
Digital Patient Intake
Digital patient intake forms are a revolutionary tool for improving productivity in your organization as well as offering a positive experience to patients. This tool enables patients to complete their intake documents online, prior to their visits. This process was traditionally completed in the waiting room. Patients would have to fill out their forms with pen and paper. Your staff was then responsible for transcribing that data into the patient’s chart. Not only did this increase wait times while patients filled out their forms, but it took up a large amount of your staff’s time.
Now, patients can do all of this in one step on their patient portal. The right vendor will offer a digital intake experience where data is uploaded directly into the patient’s chart. By eliminating the traditional intake process, providers can reduce patient wait times and increase staff productivity.
Secure Communications
By digitizing a portion of patient interactions, providers can reduce patient wait times and improve productivity. Rather than try and track down patients to deliver important information, this can now be done over the patient portal. This is a time where providers can send reminders for patient visits, reducing wait times, and freeing up staff time. Providers can also use this tool to communicate practice updates and information to patients in a secure format.
Mobile Queue Technology
Mobile Queue solutions are the latest development in the effort to reduce patient wait times and improve the patient experience. Waiting rooms can be awkward, quiet, and frustrating for patients. They are often seen as a negative part of the patient experience. A mobile queue solution enables your patients to wait more comfortably and with more at their fingertips. They can check-in for their visit from their phone, wait from their car, and receive updates about where they are in line. This allows patients to wait more comfortably for their visit as well as track where they are in line. This solution has proven to be instrumental to healthcare organizations in 2020.
Telehealth
The last tool providers need to reduce patient wait times, improve the patient experience, and increase staff productivity is a quality telehealth solution. Telehealth is used now more than ever as providers have turned to remote care solutions during the pandemic. Telehealth allows your patients to once again avoid the traditional waiting room experience and wait more comfortably for their providers. It allows them to access medical care more conveniently during their busy lives and increase their level of engagement. It also allows providers to visit with more patients on average each day than in-person visits only. Telehealth is being increasingly covered by payers and providers should consider partnering with a quality vendor.
To learn more about how your practice can access these tools to reduce patient wait times, click here.
