Digital patient intake solutions help healthcare organizations streamline administrative tasks and improve operational efficiency. Transitioning from a paper-based workflow to a technology-enabled process offers a range of advantages, including increased patient satisfaction, reduced administrative costs increased revenue, and even improved clinical care.
Read on to learn the benefits of digitizing patient intake and how it can help healthcare organizations thrive.
What is Patient Intake?
Patient intake involves gathering and verifying patient information prior to a healthcare visit that providers use to make informed decisions about the patient’s care.
Information collected typically includes the patient’s medical history, symptoms, insurance details, and personal demographic information—such as name, age, gender identity, and address.
Downsides of Traditional Patient Intake Processes
Traditional patient intake processes are manual and paper-based, which can lead to inefficiencies and challenges.
One major downside: It’s lengthy and time-consuming for patients. They may fill out multiple forms, provide the same information repeatedly, and wait for front-desk staff to manually enter the information provided before they can see a healthcare provider—reducing patient satisfaction overall.
Another challenge of traditional patient intake processes is the high probability of human error in manual data entry. Incorrect spelling, missing data, lack of standardization, or handwriting that’s difficult to read can all contribute to inaccuracies.
Additionally, traditional patient intake processes make it difficult for providers to find and access patient data quickly and easily. Delays in finding the correct forms can lead to delays in diagnosis and treatment, and it can also make coordinating care a challenge.
Finally, traditional patient intake processes can be expensive due to the high cost of paper, labor, and HIPAA-compliant storage and disposal.
Digital Patient Intake Improves Patient Satisfaction and Reduces Wait Times
With a digital patient intake workflow, patients can update their information and fill out forms at home or on the go. That flexibility supports the patient experience by reducing in-office wait times, as patients arrive with the necessary paperwork already completed.
Digital patient intake also improves communication between patients and providers. Patients can easily communicate with their healthcare team through online portals or mobile apps, which makes it easier to ask questions, get test results, and schedule appointments. Patients appreciate communicating with their providers between visits, and it can help them follow through on care plans.
Digital Patient Intake Enhances Data Accuracy
Digital patient intake can enhance data accuracy by allowing patients to self-report their identity and symptom data privately, reducing human error during data entry, encrypting sensitive information to ensure compliance with HIPAA regulations, and more.
By allowing patients to enter their information directly into the system, digital patient intake reduces the risk of transcription errors and other data entry mistakes. That’s especially important for sensitive data, such as medical history and other protected health information.
Finally, digital patient intake systems can provide real-time data validation to ensure that the information collected is accurate and consistent, which helps improve clinical care. For example, your intake system can automatically prompt patients to make sure that their medication list is up to date or report changes in their symptoms or social needs.
By enhancing data accuracy and security, digital patient intake can help healthcare organizations improve patient care, reduce costs, and comply with HIPAA requirements.
Digital Patient Intake Supports Clinical Goals
Digital patient intake can help reduce medical errors by providing real-time access to patient information, allowing providers to make data-based decisions about patient care.
For example, organizations can choose and embed patient-reported outcomes (PROs) and clinical screening tools into a digital intake process and automate scoring. Patients can complete questionnaires and clinicians can review patient responses before the visit begins, so exam-room conversations can focus on the patient and their treatment—not on surveys and scoring.
On a population level, data collected during patient intake can be de-identified and used to spot trends and patterns. Healthcare organizations can use this data to develop interventions for their patient population needs as part of overall community health improvement activities.
Digital Patient Intake Boosts Healthcare Organization’s Revenue
With a patient intake platform, you can offer patients flexible payment methods—from digital wallets and online payments to cards on file—and set up automated payment reminders to increase collection rates while reducing your organization’s cost to collect.
You can also integrate payments into the digital check-in process, which helps boost time-of-service collections and easily determine copays.
The right digital patient intake platform helps you automate eligibility and benefits checks, which can reduce errors and save time on manual review. Organizations can capture and verify patient insurance information and run multiple checks before each visit, ensuring staff can reconcile any issues prior to the appointment.
Automation of patient registration also frees up administrative staff to focus on higher-value activities, such as interacting with patients in the waiting room.
Allocating staff more efficiently can directly reduce labor costs. At the same time, creating more straightforward workflows for staff can help prevent burnout and employee turnover. It’s costlier to hire new staff than to retain your star performers, so keeping your team happy is an important way to cut down on costs.
Furthermore, digital patient intake enables healthcare organizations to track patient progress, identify trends, and enhance the quality of care provided. This data, in turn, can attract funding from programs that reward organizations based on specific metrics.
Digitizing Patient Intake Creates a Foundation for Adding more Efficiency Tools
Digitizing patient intake creates a foundation that can allow healthcare organizations to add more efficiency tools to their workflows that further support patient satisfaction, reduce administrative costs, and boost revenue.
Healthcare organizations can add after-hours coordination, online self-scheduling, patient communication tools, managed services, forms management, and more features to their digitized processes, boosting overall efficiency and outcomes across departments and care settings.
Conclusion
Digitizing patient intake offers numerous benefits for healthcare organizations. By transitioning from paper-based processes to digital solutions, organizations can improve patient satisfaction, reduce costs, enhance data accuracy, support clinical goals, boost revenue, and create a foundation for further efficiency tools.
Embracing digital patient intake is a crucial step towards thriving in today’s healthcare landscape and delivering high-quality, patient-centered care.
Beth is Cloudmineinc’s senior health editor and a certified personal trainer. She has over 10 years experience as a science journalist and is the author of two books. She deadlifts over 315 lbs.