With average operating margins still remaining 30% below their 2015 levels, health care providers are searching for new ways to regain profitability among a bevy of challenges. While these challenges include an increase in publicly funded patients, rising denials of claims from insurers, and lowering collection rates, some of the strain can be chalked up to inefficiencies in the workplace.
According to one analyst, operational efficiency will be required to ensure a profitable healthcare operation in the coming years.
To gain the right level of efficiency, more healthcare entities are moving toward partnerships with technology providers to collaborate on ways to improve the basis of care while ensuring profitability.
One of the easiest — and most cost-effective — ways to optimize efficiency is by gaining control of the vast amount of paper-based data that is inherent in today’s medical practices using document management technology.
How Document Management Contributes to Operational Efficiency for Profitability in Healthcare
For smart hospitals and healthcare systems, actionable insights gained from existing data and information will be key to organizational health.
To accomplish this, medical records and operational data will be transferred from paper to digital and combined with other data, including that from non-traditional sources like Internet of Things (IoT) devices and even wearables.
For today’s providers, beginning the process with a strong managed services provider (MSP) partner that can assist with building, maintaining, and leveraging a robust document management system (DMS) is the perfect way to gain efficiency.
There are several ways document management can optimize operational efficiency, including:
Every misfiled paper document can result in $120 of labor costs as employees search for the right information. Digitizing documents not only reduces cumbersome filing cabinet storage scenarios — which can also leave providers open to theft and loss — but makes information easy to find.
Your DMS will keep documents in a secure location where authorized personnel can easily access the information they need — when they need it — through simple searches by keyword, key phrase, or any number of attributes.
Significant bottlenecks are often encountered when laborious paper-based processes are used to onboard new patients, complete compliance procedures, or even manage human resources paperwork.
Using document management, these processes become automated and streamlined, resulting in twofold benefits — an increase in speed and efficiency and a decrease in human error from manual entry.
These workflows, once automated, allow you to capture, distribute, and archive data swiftly to keep processes on target.
Collaboration is key among medical staff to ensure proper patient care and compliance with regulations. With a DMS, staff can easily share information, case notes, and other data to provide faster responses to changes in patient status and a better level of patient care.
Departments that share knowledge can work more effectively and a DMS gives you the power to allow multiple recipients to provide input and feedback while carefully tracking all changes and modifications to prevent errors.
Finally, a DMS puts the power of data and information at the fingertips of the provider to provide the kind of insights necessary to identify, and correct, operational weaknesses.
Trust Doing Better Business for Leading-Edge Document Management
Doing Better Business (DBB) understands the process-oriented environment that comprises most healthcare situations. In order to improve your operational efficiency, you must get firm control of your processes.
Our document management experts can create a solution that is targeted toward your particular challenges and needs. We can provide you means to organize, standardize, distribute, and manage your documents and data so that processes can be automated, improved, and optimized for efficiency.
Alongside streamlining your workflows through automated processes, our team will ensure that all the sensitive data your practice handles is properly protected — and compliant with any necessary data privacy regulations.
Take charge of your operational efficiency — and profitability. Contact a representative from Doing Better Business and discover how our document management solutions can help your healthcare organization thrive.