Let’s talk about your EHR needs: 1.800.383.6278 MEDHOST Community Login
Picture this scenario: After finding a ride to her local hospital, Mary is dropped off for a MRI. However, it turns out that Mary wasn’t properly pre-registered at her previous appointment. Now Mary is forced to reschedule and then wait at the hospital until her friend who dropped her off can return.
For Mary, who lives about 45 minutes away, this misstep is a huge inconvenience that will mean several hours lost out of her day, not to mention her friend’s time. On top of that, Mary’s delayed MRI will postpone her ability to receive the care she needs in a timely manner—a fact that could not only negatively impact her overall health, but also dissuade her from returning to this hospital.
Unfortunately, Mary’s scenario is fairly commonplace, especially for patients who live in rural areas. Consider if another patient, John, took an unpaid day off of work to drive 30-plus miles only to experience a similar scheduling misstep.
These hypothetical situations can be very real problems for the 1 in 5 Americans who live in rural communities. According to the National Rural Health Association, this demographic is also older, more susceptible to illness, and suffers higher rates of chronic disease like heart disease and diabetes than their urban counterparts.
In the care coordination process, considerable pitfalls can affect both patients and providers alike. Though providers, missed appointments, referral inefficiencies and poor communication are not necessarily new, the industry-wide shift to a value-based model of care underscores just how problematic these lingering organizational cracks and inconsistencies can be to a provider’s bottom line.
As providers devise new strategies to boost patient satisfaction in their value-based care models, hospitals and healthcare facilities know all-too-well the importance of turning those initiatives into actionable results. Streamlined appointment scheduling platforms can ease the care coordination process for patients, perhaps most notably in its ability to provide a sense of immediacy. With a simplified system, patients can schedule follow-up appointments and upcoming procedures on the same day of their appointment, eliminating any unnecessary waiting.
An easy-to-use, streamlined scheduling solution not only increases patient satisfaction, but has added benefits for providers as well:
In the past, scheduling errors were often perceived as an acceptable, commonplace part of the healthcare experience. As patient expectations have evolved to something more akin with a customer experience, hospitals can’t afford to ignore the values placed on convenience and certainty.
MEDHOST’s YourCare ContinuumTM was developed to help make appointment scheduling easier and more efficient for the patient, while also helping providers increase patient visibility, manage hospital services and share clinical information. Read on to learn how YourCare Continuum addresses the challenges of scheduling patients and coordinating care more effectively with its cross-platform, role-based appointment scheduling solution.
Picture this: A patient visits a physician at their community hospital. During that visit the physician decides that patient needs to see a specialist. If the provider can't connect their patient with the right options for care in their network—and simplify the appointment scheduling process—the patient is likely to take matters into their own hands. Often that means going out of network, and in the worst-case scenario, an out of network specialist in a big city health system.
How can this community hospital help the patient receive the care they need and reduce the likelihood of patient leakage?
As the on-going consumerization of healthcare empowers patient choice, prioritizing the patient experience becomes paramount. Adopting tools designed to help patients navigate their next steps are a big part of meeting this industry shift.
Scheduling platforms allow providers and hospitals to immediately search availability, schedule appointments, and confirm services for patients. By connecting patients to convenient resources, community hospitals can help address patient leakage.
Many of the problems facing community hospitals are considerable and out of their control. Shifting reimbursement models and regulatory restrictions contribute to the healthcare crisis facing rural communities.
To date, the University of North Carolina’s Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research reports that there have been 87 rural hospital closures since January 2010. In addition, the National Rural Health Association says that roughly one in three community hospitals across the country are in danger of shutdown.
However, these hospitals do have the power to evolve internally to help ensure their doors remain open.
Part of that evolution is to employ tools that are basic in any other consumer-facing experience. Imagine paying for a haircut at your hair salon or getting your oil changed at the car dealership. One of the ways they optimize the customer experience and ensure a return visit is simplifying scheduled visits.
To ward off the threat of patient leakage, web-based scheduling platforms streamline the appointment process and, in turn, create a more convenient experience for the patient.
Hospitals, providers, and consumers should all have the freedom to schedule and request services based on their needs. Each part of the process should be highly-visible and adaptive, from patients to clinics to hospitals, from services to referrals.
To retain patients, and attract new ones, improved care coordination can simultaneously refocus attention on the patient experience and stall the danger of patient leakage.
Imagine the potential of scheduling services that could also allow hospitals, physicians, or clinics to directly manage facility transfers, surgery requests, clinical orders, or Emergency Department wait queues.
Scheduling solutions, like those discussed above, empower patient choice and match the rises in consumerization occurring throughout healthcare. For providers, a single system scheduling solution represents a long-term investment that can help drive patient loyalty and work to increase revenue by consolidating the entire process.
A scheduling platform, like YourCare ContinuumTM, enables more efficient care coordination and can work as a competitive differentiator for the community hospital.
Discover how MEDHOST’s YourCare Continuum's solution can empower patients in your community and transform your healthcare enterprise.
Patient leakage—when patients move from an in-network primary care physician (PCP) to an out-of-network specialist or laboratory, imaging, or ancillary service—is estimated to reduce as much as 20 percent of a system’s revenues every year.
There are many reasons why patients aren’t referred to, or are no-shows, for an appointment with an in-network specialist or for a diagnostic test. Sometimes, PCPs refer patients to an out-of-network specialist based on their medical judgment. Other times, the referral is based on the patient’s preference. Sometimes, it’s out of habit.
Imagine this scenario: A patient is at the doctor’s office, and the physician orders an MRI for the patient. The office prints the order out, hands it to the patient, and tells the patient he can go wherever he wants to get that test—instead of setting an appointment while the patient is in the office.
That lost appointment, or even a referral that results in a patient no-show, can cost the hospital system an average of $210, according to a 2016 column from Healthcare Financial Management Association. But beyond the lost revenue, the missed appointment may mean a worsened clinical outcome for that patient.
Setting the appointment for the patient while he is at the office makes it much more likely that the patient will attend that appointment. But the increased workload and the back-and-forth nature of making calls and manual processing exacerbate the challenge. Hospital call centers are extremely busy. Typically, in a community hospital, the schedulers are not just responsible for scheduling, but they’re responsible for all of the pre-registration tasks that have to happen before the patient arrives.
MEDHOST addresses the challenges of scheduling patients and coordinating care more effectively with its cross-platform, role-based appointment scheduling solution. By making the process of appointment-setting easier, hospitals can address patient leakage.
The scheduling solution provides the tools for PCP offices to automate outpatient and admission orders, as well as transfer orders from acute to post-acute providers. Upcoming features include surgery request appointment times and self-scheduling tools that allow patients to make their own appointment time or sign into the emergency department wait queue. Also included are direct admissions, facility transfers, clinical orders, cloud scheduling, and a centralized record across various entities in the care continuum.
Not only does MEDHOST’s scheduling solution make it easier and more likely for patients to follow physician directives, but it also makes it more efficient for administrators to schedule a patient, send an email confirmation, and automate communication. The system eases headaches by helping reduce the ping pong-like nature of scheduling and rescheduling.
Ultimately, by making the process more efficient and helping physicians steer patients to the care they need, hospitals can shore up the leaks and keep patients in the system—happily and healthily.
Managing the increasing number of patients having chronic illness or conditions using traditional methods is challenging, resource intensive, and often ineffective.
YourCare Managment™ is designed to improve program compliance, enhance health outcomes, and reduce hospital readmissions by:
We designed the YourCare Management product features and functionality based on feedback from a wide array of health coaches, clinicians, and patients managing chronic conditions.
