The practice management system that your clinic uses is one of the most critical and influential software programs that you will use, but it’s also one that not many physicians spend a lot of time in. Your clinical and non-clinical staff will be the ones that use it the vast majority of the time, and choosing the correct one can streamline your billing, patient scheduling, and clinical workflows to optimize revenue and improve your financial viability.
There are hundreds (maybe even thousands) of practice management systems to choose from today, designed for everything from vast hospital systems with thousands of providers to small solo practices; knowing what features you need can help you narrow down your search to get the right one.
1: Simple Patient Scheduling & Insurance Verification
Patient scheduling and insurance verification are two of the most critical steps in your practice management processes. Creating an efficient schedule that allows your providers to see more patients in a day brings in added revenue to your practice (with virtually no added costs, since your fixed costs are already covered). Practice management software that offers online scheduling can provide further convenience to your staff and your patients by reducing time spent on the phone scheduling appointments.
Prior to every patient appointment, another essential step is verifying insurance coverage and eligibility. This simple step can dramatically reduce errors and unpaid claims on the back end. Your practice management software should automatically verify patient insurance information prior to an appointment, alerting you to a problem if it finds one so you can resolve it with the patient before they arrive. Then when you submit claims after an appointment, you have fewer rejected claims, shorter days in A/R, and higher total collections per billed charges.
2: EHR Integration
Another critically important feature is a practice management software system that integrates seamlessly with your electronic health record, or EHR. Non-integrated systems require manual data transfers from one system to the other. Not only is this extremely inefficient and a waste of your staff’s time, it’s also the most likely cause of errors that could lead to everything from claim rejections and denials to even more serious mistakes or omissions in medical treatment (and liability for medical malpractice lawsuits).
In part two of this blog post, we’ll cover a few additional features that can significantly improve your ability to streamline medical operations and patient care, as well as a couple of things you probably don’t need (but some salespeople might still try to push on you).
When you’re ready for a new practice management software for your small- or medium-sized medical practice, talk to AdvancedMD to find out why ours is the premier choice for independent clinicians throughout the U.S.
