Sure, it reads like a headline from 1999. However, paper forms that have been filled out incorrectly, left incomplete and with insufficient information lead to an inadequate patient intake process. All of this missing information creates insufficiencies and can leave you inundated with hours of inessential tasks.
If you are frustrated with paper forms – from illegible handwriting to incomplete sections/pages AND the time required for completion coupled with the added hours to your workday – then it’s past time for your practice’s workflow to include the Internet and HIPAA compliant online forms.
With online forms, you can do away with your paper forms and your frustrations to happily capturing accurate and complete information in a transferrable digital format, all while protecting patient privacy and increasing time saved.
3 Ways to Deliver Accurate, On-Point Digital Documentation with Online Forms:
1. Legibility and Inaccuracies are no longer an issue.
No matter how clear and organized a paper form is, most people will still find a way to write illegibly—especially if the information you need is really important:
- What’s the medication they are taking? Can’t tell.
- What’s their medical history? It’s not certain or it was left incomplete.
It takes you and your staff hours to correct the errors and contact a patient for clarification on their handwriting in order to gather missing information.
Digital forms prevent inaccuracies by offering defined and conditional logic fields, allowing only certain types of options for answers—such as a simple “yes/no” single-select option, differentiation between a number versus text, or a drop-down selection of pre-populated answers versus a text box for long-form answers. With digital forms, the guessing game is over.
2. Forms are always complete.
You know what patients commonly do if they do not understand a question on a form? They skip it! Sometimes they may not even notice the backside of a paper form! Most of the time they just rush through because they’re tired of sitting in your waiting room. Real life happens. With digital forms, information is gathered before the appointment – on a mobile device, computer, or a personal tablet – and in the comfort of the patient’s home where they are free from distractions.
Digital forms can be customized to display some or all answers as “required”. With required fields, the patient cannot submit forms back to you until those fields are complete. With this feature, all of the important information needed for accurate treatment is gathered and your patients are more satisfied with their overall experience.
3. No more data entry keystroke errors.
When collecting paper forms and manually typing information into your record system, opportunity for errors arise. Even if the handwriting is legible and the form is completely filled out, keystroke errors or data entry errors are quite common – as much as 18 to 40% common! The more complex the system being used for data entry or the more complicated the spreadsheet, the higher the error rates jump. These errors might be just a simple typo. However, even a simple clerical error could lead to a catastrophic event, such as a medication-dosage error. Streamlining the transfer of data while handling medical information is of the utmost importance. By using primary source data (the client’s own entry), mistakes are drastically reduced.
Capturing accurate patient information is vital to the success of your practice and is just one of the many advantages of transitioning to HIPAA compliant online forms. After adoption of digital forms, physician offices see benefits such as an ideal and streamlined workflow, increased time-savings, fewer billing errors, reduction in denial claims, and less hassle in collecting fully completed forms. For a free demo of how HIPAA compliant online forms can improve the accuracy of your patient data and increase workplace efficiency, schedule a quick 15-minute DEMO session.
