Introduction
Clinical work is defined as the actions and procedures performed by clinicians to diagnose and treat patients, along with maintaining their health in the long run. On the other hand, clinical workflow involves all the steps that are involved in the management and treatment of patients through clinical processes that arrive on clinical outcomes on the basis of a start and endpoint.
With the increasing demand for quality customer service in the healthcare industry, clinicians are required to streamline their workflow to not only provide a seamless experience to their patients but also stay in tune with the latest technological trends in the healthcare industry. So, let us discuss some of the major ways through which the clinical workflow can be streamlined in the healthcare industry:-
Top 7 Ways to Streamline your Clinical Workflow
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Identify Peripheral Effects and Dependencies
It will be a very rare situation if one process involved in a workflow is independent of the other processes since all the processes are dependant on each other in one way or the other. When redesigning your clinical workflow, you should identify all the dependencies and also, assess the likely peripheral effects due to the negative and positive effects of redesigning. This way, the effects which are unanticipated during redesigning can be corrected before making them operational.
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Make the Patient Check-in and Check-out Process Simplified
The patient flow efficiency depends greatly on how streamlined are the check-in and check-out processes. Form fillings, diagnostic testing, follow-up visits, referrals, etc., are a part of these processes which need to be simplified. For this, it is recommended to do the verifications on the phone itself rather than in person, keep form fillings online and simple, have a separate counter for checkouts to avoid waiting and causing any kind of irritability, and more. All these measures will not only make the check-in and check-out process easier but also, facilitate patient care by freeing staff time.
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Keep Client Perspective in Mind while Redesigning Workflow
The ongoing and initial client experience holds a lot of importance when it comes to redesigning your clinical workflow. It is important to understand this experience in terms of an organization’s procedures, policies, activities, timely responses, etc., and one of the best ways to have this understanding is by stepping in the client shoes and going through all the processes from starting till the finish on your own. This will let you know about any irregularities and inefficiencies in the workflow and take appropriate actions to get rid of them while redesigning.
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Leverage the use of the Automation Technology
Zion Market Research explains that automation technology has streamlined the work processes of various industries around the globe, and its market is likely to grow from $USD 33,334 in 2018 to $USD 63,596 by 2026. Getting the right software in place not only eliminates the paperwork at large but saves time and effort too. For example, bringing in the use of Electronic Health Records (EHR) helps in keeping all the records of the patients in the digital form, leading to ease of accessibility and reducing the record management complexity. As per a report by McKinsey Quarterly, almost 36% of clinical tasks like accounting for doctors, appointment reminders, prioritizing appointments, customized services, etc., can be easily automated.
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Leverage the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Artificial Intelligence has great potential when it comes to answering the possible queries that arise in the minds of clinicians based on certain information related to a specific diagnosis and treatment. In other words, AI helps in making the content personalized for clinicians through deep analysis of online search queries, practice data, self and formal assessments. Apart from this, the clinical burden of documentation is also brought down greatly by AI in the form of auto-populating problem lists and allergies from physician notes which are open-ended, using previous clinical records for relevant data querying, transcribing patient outcomes which are recorded, and more.
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Improve Accounting Accuracy
Accounting forms one of the most important operations of any business, and without streamlining the accounting operations, none of the businesses can streamline their workflow. Managing the finances has never been easy for clinicians owing to the complexities of the state healthcare laws and insurance premiums of the patients. If we go by the stats provided by a KPMG study, clinicians can increase their savings by almost 50% through robotic process automation. So, it becomes evident to keep a tap on the accounts payable and accounts receivable processes, along with boosting cash flow through automation and staff training for maintaining error-free accounting records.
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Get the Best Professional Help
For clinicians, their top priority is confined to providing the best diagnosis and treatments possible to their patients. On top of that, having various management and accounting tasks to handle apart from providing a great customer experience, understanding the latest technology, and bringing it into use becomes overwhelming for them. This is where outsourcing partners help clinicians by lowering their workload for such unproductive tasks by providing the right expertise and technology that not only streamlines the various clinical workflow processes, along with providing a skilled accountant for doctors but also eliminates the IT, infrastructure, and hiring costs, eventually making it a beneficial collaboration in every sense.
Conclusion
This brings us to the conclusion that a lot of clinical workflow processes add to the management burden of the clinicians. This burden can be brought down significantly, along with improving its quality through the incorporation of the latest use of technology, and also bringing in the expertise of an experienced and efficient outsourcing partner.
There is no denying to the fact that in the healthcare industry, it is eventually the quality of treatment provided to the patients that truly matters. However, for clinicians to be in a position to deliver their 100% efficiency, they need management and accounting processes streamlined and sorted out, which can be easily accomplished with the solutions mentioned above.
