5 Easy Ways to Streamline Your Patient Intake Process
How long does your patient intake process take? A lengthy intake process is frustrating for everyone involved: it prevents patients from seeing their doctor quickly and bogs administrative staff down with paperwork.
Worst of all, a clunky intake process can affect how many patients a doctor can see in a day.
A more efficient patient intake process translates to big benefits for both doctors and patients. The question is, how can your practice streamline patient intake?
There are several things you can do to speed up your intake process. By making simple changes to your registration forms and staffing procedures, you can transform the way you interact with patients.
Read on to learn five simple tips for improving your intake process.
1. Use Online Registration
If you want to revamp your intake process, start at the beginning, before the patient even steps foot inside your office. Allow patients to use an online scheduling form to set up their next visit.
Younger generations hate phone calls, so they’ll be much more comfortable setting up appointments online. An online scheduling form also allows them to fill out their patient information before the appointment.
2. Get Better Forms
Confusing intake forms can cause the whole patient intake process to grind to a halt. A patient may be unsure how to fill the form out, or they might miss an important question.
Streamlining your patient intake forms makes the whole process smoother. Order some easy-to-read carbonless forms to save your patients time–and they’ll make filing simpler for your staff, too.
3. Take Advantage of Texting
As we’ve already mentioned, phone calls are a no-go for many younger patients; how, then, do you communicate with them before an appointment? Text messages are one convenient method.
Use text messages to remind patients of upcoming appointments, reschedule, and more. Texts can do some of the heavy lifting of patient intake before the patient’s actual appointment date.
4. Automate Payments
Collecting payment is one of the more frustrating parts of patient intake. Many healthcare providers collect payment after the patient has seen their doctor, but collecting beforehand is faster and simpler.
If you really want to improve the patient experience, though, you can set up automated payments. That way, your staff doesn’t have to collect payment at all–it’ll just come through automatically when the patient arrives.
5. Emphasize Staff Training
While the systems above can help speed up your patient intake process, they all hinge on one thing: an effective administrative staff. Automatic payments, for example, are useless if staff members don’t know how to set them up.
Take the time to fully educate your staff on patient intake procedures, especially if you’re implementing new tech like online registration forms.
The more knowledgeable your staff is, the more effective your intake will be!
Quick and Painless Patient Intake
Patient intake can be the most frustrating part of being a healthcare provider. It doesn’t have to be, though–by taking advantage of modern technology and tweaking some things around the office, you can improve the experience.
Streamlined patient intake is only one way to improve your private practice. Visit our business blog for more advice on building your brand and expanding your business!