Many of us have had the experience of being or knowing a patient who’s being discharged from the hospital with a stack of papers full of generic and often unhelpful advice. Buried in there somewhere are usually instructions for follow-up, sometimes for more than one doctor. About 75% of patients go home after they leave the hospital, so if follow-up is needed, it’s often on the patient and their families or friends to make sure that things get scheduled. It can be a daunting task, particularly after something as exhausting and potentially scary as a hospitalization.
We know that appropriate follow up is important for reducing readmission rates and good for patient care in general. Taking a proactive approach can help ensure that people get the follow-up care needed, increase patient satisfaction, and keep them out of the hospital.
Whether you’re rounding or back in the outpatient clinic, there are some tips & tricks you can use to take that proactive approach.
Use a Digital Rounding Tool
Digital rounding tools are good for more than just charge capture – they can connect your inpatient and outpatient worlds. Particularly if you round in different systems of care, using one tool to help coordinate follow up with your office gives you the efficiency of one process that will work no matter where you are.
Don’t Wait for Patients to Call
No one likes to wait on hold, or worse, get trapped in The Endless Phone Menu. It begs the question – what’s the average wait time for a patient to call into your office and schedule an appointment? Alerting your staff back at the office that a patient needs follow-up allows your team to contact the patient, rather than putting the onus on the patient.
Set Your Schedulers Up for Success
Patient scheduling can be complicated, particularly when testing is needed prior to follow up.
What’s the average time needed for a study to be read so it’s ready for the follow up appointment? If the patient needs labs performed, will they be ready in time? Can two tests be performed on the same day, or do they need to be staggered?
These are only some of the questions that your scheduling staff may be juggling. Even if you’re not putting orders into the outpatient EHR, simply flagging what needs to be done for your scheduling team will help them plan appropriately, so the follow-up visit is as useful as it can be.
Mark the Patient for Discharge
Do you know that a patient is ready to be discharged? While you’re still in the hospital, use the EHR or your rounding tool to flag patients who are ready to leave from your standpoint. This makes it easier to coordinate with your partners and the rest of the care team to help get patients out of the hospital, rather than making them wait.
Consider Transportation Concerns for Follow-Up
According to Modern Healthcare, 3.6 million patients miss medical appointments every year due to lack of transportation. How patients will get to your office is something to factor in before the patient leaves the hospital. Ride share programs like Uber and Lyft can help fill this need – the Blue Cross Blue Shield Associated even partnered with Lyft in 2017 to provide rides for patients in “transportation deserts”.
Local non-profits and church groups can help patients for whom cost is a barrier, and non-emergency medical transport services are also available. It’s also worth asking the question: does this patient need to come to the office, or would an alternative method of follow up like telemedicine work better?
HybridChart is a complete rounding software solution that allows you to connect to your practice and manage follow-up for discharged patients. Visit our website today to learn more about our discharge planning tools.
Meet EVOLVE by HybridChart – Our fourth generation software platform.
Take control of your entire workflow through a user-friendly solution created by a physician. Medical software too often fails to address the specific needs of providers. Rounding at one or more hospitals presents a unique challenge. There is the need for effective team collaboration and easy charge capture. Census management means true collaboration among provider and staff. Rounding at multiple facilities just got way easier.
Covering on-call now has the luxury of essential information for clean hand-offs. Charge capture takes less than five seconds. Diagnoses are easy to find and follow the patient. Customized charge menus make it easy to enter the correct charge. Don’t let billing for your work slow you down. Charge in real-time and focus on caring for the patient.
HybridChart has numerous levels of safeguards against missed charges. The Charge Checker feature will scan every day of an admission and assure there are charges. Using the Charge Matrix you have visibility of all charges from multiple providers per day for any given patient.
Most practices see a revenue increase of 8-10% after using HybridChart – attributed to capturing every charge for every patient. Charges are complex enough with just the diagnosis codes and charge codes. To make your charges accurate HybridChart allows you to easily adjust the Date of Service and assign Secondary Billers such as nurse-practitioners and physician assistants. Modifiers can be built into specific Billing Modules or choose from a customized list managed by your practice. Seamlessly navigate our Charge Capture workflow and save time without losing accuracy.
An automated charge capture system may be the most profitable investment that you can make in your practice today.
You can instantly boost your revenue by 10% using our modern, high-tech and easy-to-implement charge capture system.
Smarter Rounding and Workflow Software for Doctors
At HybridChart, we provide technology that connects your healthcare team, increases efficiencies, AND improves your bottom line. HybridChart’s cloud-based software adapts to your practice’s unique workflow and will improve your profitability and patient outcomes by utilizing our 5 features:census management, charge capture, secure messaging, discharge management, and data analytics.
NEVER miss another charge and get PAID for the work you do!
If you are interested in taking your medical practice to the next level and want to employ the best hospital charge capture practice available in the industry, come visit our website at www.hybridchart.com, or call us at 1-877-684-0608 for a demo today!
