Healthcare, Technology & Patient Care
Even in the high-pressure world of managed healthcare, where it often feels like there is never enough time for each patient, the vast majority of clinicians still work exceptionally hard to improve patient outcomes. This is a noble goal, but given the many constraints within which they are working, it can be a difficult one to achieve. After all, if there’s one thing we can’t make more of, it’s time, but time is what patients often need.
Technology as a time machine.
While we can’t make more time, the integration of technology into most facets of healthcare has created efficiencies so vast and impactful in some areas that it’s almost as amazing as a time-generating machine might be. For instance, technology has enabled faster research, care delivery advancements, and drug development, saving countless lives. On the operational side, integrated electronic health records (EHR) software has allowed even the smallest clinical practices to become more efficient across their entire business, saving money and man-hours, while freeing up physicians to spend more time with their patients.
How technology contributes to better patient care.
Healthcare systems, individual practices, and patients can all ultimately benefit from the efficiencies created via technological innovations. When rolled out thoughtfully, these integrations put the patient first by more efficiently supporting physician efforts to deliver effective care, ultimately improving patient outcomes. How?
- Technology creates a window: Over the last five years, there has been a sizable shift in favor of transparency across the board in just about every facet of healthcare, from tracking the way departments communicate, to the ways in which data is collected, measured and analyzed. None of this would be possible without technological innovations in healthcare software, including EHRs and the trend toward digital-first RCM. With time ever-more limited, faster, and more efficient communication and data analysis put less stress on physicians, freeing them up to focus on patient care.
- And speaking of EHRs: Paper records are mostly a thing of the past as EHRs have become the standard. However, as ubiquitous as EHR technology may be, its developers aren’t resting on their laurels. Newer and more sophisticated versions are being rolled out all the time, providing medical professionals with rich, meaningful data about their patients quickly, while encouraging inter-departmental information exchange.
- Better billing: Billing is one of the most important and complex areas of health care systems, and achieving perfect accuracy is nearly impossible given the number of departments, organizations, and individuals involved. However, huge advances in medical coding software are making errors much less common. This allows a smoother, faster flow of revenue back to healthcare organizations from both insurers and patients. It also improves the patient experience when billing is as accurate as possible. Nothing is more likely to create friction than incorrect billing that causes a claim to come back to a patient denied due to a coding error.
- Advances in Integrations: Some companies, such as Aquina Health, specialize in creating integrations that work with healthcare systems’ and practices’ current EHR software, like that which has been developed by athenahealth, AdvancedMD, and Kareo. For instance, Aquina’s Via integration allows providers to be paid immediately when processing claims, decreasing gaps in revenue, and our Curae solution gives patients more options to easily finance their own care as an “invisible” part of the intake process. Both of these integrations speed up and simplify revenue collection in distinct ways, giving physicians more time back to focus on patient care.
Curious to find out more about our Via or Curae integrations for health care providers? Simply visit Aquina Health today to get started.