Streamlined front-end operations are a necessity if you want to run a successful therapy practice. An organized administrative process driven by front-end staff can boost the productivity and profitability of your therapy practice. Your office’s front-desk employees are your number one brand representatives. They are the gatekeeper for your entire organization. It is essential to ensure that they are working in the most efficient manner possible.
Front desk inefficiencies
While your practice should always strive to implement the most efficient customer-facing processes possible, certain common problems have a tendency to bog down your administrative operations. Here are some of the most common problems that affect your front-desk team, reducing their efficiency and wasting your therapy practice’s time and resources which can result in a loss of profitability for your practice.
Paperwork over patients
One of the costliest mistakes that your team members can make is putting paperwork over the patients. Your front-desk workers are faced with an enormous amount of administrative tasks tied to each patient interaction, from filling out necessary demographic forms, to HIPAA releases, to insurance information. It’s tempting for the front desk to focus on their paperwork, but they do so at the expense of the patients in front of them. This diminishes the customer experience when front-end staff de-prioritizes them in favor of forms and paperwork.
Frustrating wait times
A long office wait can be one of the worst things in terms of patient satisfaction. Long wait times communicate an atmosphere of inefficiency to your clients. More time spent in the office waiting room means less time receiving therapy, resulting in less billable services for your practice. Idle time is a wasted resource.
Scheduling errors
A well-defined patient scheduling and intake process is paramount to a streamlined therapy practice. Intake is the administrative function that generates most of the front-end staff’s paperwork. It is easy to make mistakes when stacks of disorganized papers are sitting around your reception area.
Scheduling future appointments is on the other end of the intake funnel. In order to ensure continuity of care and good communication it’s essential that your practice uses some form of organized appointment setting process.
The solution to front-end inefficiencies
While it’s easy to see the disconnect in your practice’s workflow, implementing a culture change in workplace productivity can be difficult. It helps if you have the appropriate tool for the job. Practice Pro’s electronic medical record (EMR) offers more administrative functions than just medical documentation and care plan creation. Our line of therapy software solutions can help you streamline your front-desk, saving your practice time and money.
Utilizing the right scheduling tools
An EMR therapy software that includes patient scheduling tools can help you reduce costly errors and patient frustration while at the same time increasing your therapy practice’s retention rate. Practice Pro’s patient scheduling software integrates into your patient notes and billing system allowing any team member to easily schedule repeat sessions at point of treatment. The scheduling software also allows you to set email, phone, and text reminders for your patients in order to reduce cancellations and no-shows through a customized template that elevates messaging while keeping consistent branding and voice. Patients can be reminded of the appointment up to 48 hours in advance. Communication between patients and your team keep attendance, and profitability, strong by reducing wasted therapy downtime.
The right solution also helps offload some of these administrative tasks from your staff onto clients by allowing patients to enter demographic and insurance information ahead of scheduling. EMR billing functions present potential clients with questionnaires to help them set appointments on their own.
Enhancing the patient experience with patient portal
Practice Pro’s EMR software also features a patient portal application which gives patients a suite of self-serve options from appointment setting, to self check-in, to payment processing. This helps free up your front-desk staff to complete more important tasks like administrative duties, or even better, positive patient interaction.
Using a fully scalable EMR software can help your practice streamline its business operations and reduce inefficient practices among your paraprofessional staff, leading to an increase in the value of your person-hours, and a higher chance to capture all your billable services.
The patient portal also allows clients to set up a diverse set of administrative tasks that they can complete themselves such as bill payments and appointment scheduling. This prevents front-line staff from getting bogged down with simple administrative tasks.
Learn more about how your practice can simply scheduling, automate the billing process, improve the patient’s office experience. Schedule a live demo today to find out how you can empower your practice and your patients.