The front office is one of the most important pieces of the patient experience but is also an often overlooked area where efficiencies can be gained. The front office handles major tasks like capturing and verifying patient demographics, collecting patient balances, and providing the first interaction between your practice and the patient. In this blog we’ll share eClinicalWorks tips that can help you optimize your front office.
Online Appointment Booking
Adding the healow Open Access online appointment booking feature will help to reduce the patient call volume for scheduling appointments and can keep your schedule full. Online scheduling provides an added convenience to patients and gives your practice that ability to put in place settings to make sure each appointment booked fits both the provider and the patient's schedules. For example, practices can use Visit Type Rules to designate the first hour of every Monday to new patients only.
Get Started with eClinicalWorks Kiosk
The eClinicalWorks Kiosk can free up your front office from having to enter in patient details. The Kiosk provides patients with the ability to enter their own information into eClinicalWorks. This not only saves time but also provides a completely paperless check-in process.
Patients can complete custom questionnaires created by your office to capture things like past medical history and family history. The Kiosk can also capture signatures from patients for your office’s financial policy and have patients either enter in patient demographics or update or verify current demographic details stored in eClinicalWorks.
Use Colors to Organize the Schedule
A great way to organize your schedule is to assign colors to different parts of the schedule. Whether you assign specific colors to visit types, visit statuses, facilities, or something else, giving colors will make it easy for your front office staff to recognize, read, and view the schedule.
Implement a Credit Card on File Program
One of the more time consuming processes that takes place in the front office is processing payments. Implementing a credit card on file program at your practice can make the process of collecting patient balances and copays faster and easier for the front office and the patient.
A credit card on file program can also boost practice revenue and have a dramatic impact on your accounts receivable. Sending statements for collection can take up many hours for accounts receivable (AR) and too often, payments end up in collection after 120 days. Implementing a CCOF can help both the practice and patients stay on top of co-payments, deductibles and other fees.
Standardize Front Office Workflows
Finally, ensure your practice has a proper workflow for gathering information over the phone. While it is up to your practice how much information you want to collect for a new patient, it is crucial to establish a standard process to ensure the same data is captured for every patient before the office visit. We recommend collecting at least a phone number, insurance details, and an email address so that patients can automatically become web enabled and receive appointment reminders via Messenger.
OPTIMIZATION SOLUTIONS
eCW Training, Optimization, & Support
Struggling to keep up with upgrades and implement new features? We can help.
