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Human-Centric Design In Healthcare

Human-Centric Design in Healthcare – A total game changer to strengthen your referral network, increase your revenue and boost patient engagement

Referrals are key for any Healthcare Specialities or Imaging Centres to generate a steady, strong and sustainable referral pipeline. Health systems need to understand that today’s referral is tomorrow’s repeat patient. Thus, adopting industry’s best practices or solutions will help them to improve patient experience and patient referral rates. Traditionally referrals come through multiple sources like fax, phone, direct messaging, virtual print, etc. and regardless of how they are referred, responding to patients’ health needs and keeping them within the network is vital for all businesses. A good referral relationship requires a systematic, streamlined and scheduled amount of time and attention.

Health Systems and Hospitals should know the financial impact of losing patient referrals and ascertain those lost revenue opportunities.

The technology in healthcare is exponentially advancing and rapidly changing the industry for the better. Both, small and large health systems, and imaging centers have more options to select a suitable solution than ever before. But, before choosing it is important to evaluate, analyze the options and adopt the right solutions to achieve their business goals or needs.

In the referral process, it is important for the referring physicians to know if their patients actually see the recommended specialist. Research has demonstrated that 25% – 50% of referring providers do not know if their patients completed the referral, both the referring and receiving provider may not communicate, and studies show that around 50% of providers do not have contact with one another. And, 61% of patients would switch providers if it were more convenient to schedule an appointment.

Today’s patient referral system is a paradigm shift from fee-for-service to value-based-care. This shift towards increased collaboration, improved overall access to care, lower cost, better outcomes, etc., demands a technology that is human-centric. Such design will improve communication and collaboration, transparency, efficiency for coordinated care to align with the business objective to improve efficiency and deliver better patient care. In order to achieve this, healthcare systems need to change their longstanding approach to keep the referrals within their network and learn to be agile. The new solution should enable workflow optimization and improve financial performance when combined with operational best practices to provide timely care, improved appointment conversion, and completion rates.

So how to get a steady, strong and sustainable growth for your business?
1. Invest in the right technology
2. Diversify – build a strong referral network, keep your referring physician informed, collaborate better for an improved outcome and have a steady patient inflow
3. Grow and sustain your revenue stream

Then, sustain and grow to the next level
1. Learn to be agile – agile provides compelling competitive advantages
2. Follow industry best practices – Engage| Interact| Build Trust
3. One of the most important responsibility is to make your patients feel safe and truly valued
4. Keep your referring physicians informed about the referral, build trust and get more patients referred to you

Most PCP’s and other healthcare providers remain the most important source of new patient acquisition. Driving new patient acquisitions and retaining them within the network is an ongoing requirement for successful practices. To succeed in business, providers need to

– Effectively manage referrals from multiple sources, utilize a standard deep-rooted process
– Communicate instantly with referral sources to fill in the missing information
– Respond to referrals quickly to reduce referral leakage
– Customizable dashboards to give instant information for informed decisions
– Ensure to have a key metrics to track, study and measure real-time metrics for referral volume and patient leakage
– Improve overall quality of care across the care continuum
– Have a well-orchestrated customizable workflow

Once a referral comes in it is important to analyze – who needs to be involved, what has to happen, and when – the timelines. This has to be documented and technology can be of great help to have all the parties involved. With the help of industry experts, human-centric designs often involve out-of-box thinking and lead to creative and highly innovative solutions when compared to that of traditional designs. To create a successful human-centric design it is important to share and discuss what you’ve made with the people you’re designing for and further refine it according to their requirement and current business challenges. By understanding the customer needs, technology providers will be primed to innovate successfully.

Our powerful solutions are tightly focused to give your business the winning edge, improve your patient experience and achieve operational excellence. Understanding the customer needs and developing solutions is our hallmark. Sustainable development means adopting solutions that best suit your business needs. The sustainable growth of any business is the result of forces working together. Let’s get started!

How Not to Share Patient Information For Referral

The medical referral process is an important part of ambulatory care in the US. Medical referrals have a direct connection to patient health outcome and the provider’s revenue flow. Patient-specific information and the need to keep it safe is even more important.
To protect patient information from falling into the wrong hands, healthcare providers use various procedures and processes to ensure maximum security but when it comes to referral workflow there are no standard procedures nor any secure technology to ensure information safety.

Gigabytes of patient records are compromised each year because providers do not have processes, the required technology or is unaware of HIPAA regulations. Here is how not to share patient information during referral.

Email Is Not What You Think It Is:

Many providers rely on emails to send and receive patient information instantly. Emails are easy and a lot faster than faxes but the problem with emails is that the files sent through with emails are generally un-encrypted when transmitted or when saved leaving patient information sensitive to theft. Using emails to share patient-related data is against HIPAA compliant and according to HIPAA, the provider is held responsible for any breach.

Beware Of Faxes:

Faxes are the most common format to send and receive patient information between practices. Regular faxes are affected by the problem of encryption; since these files are not encrypted, this information could be accessed by an individual with access to phone lines and basic knowledge of the system. Faxes are slow and time-consuming and do not support all type of file formats. Received faxes are usually kept in the machine for some time exposing patient information to unauthorized people. Faxes leave a paper trail of patient information which will practically result in making EMR/EHR systems useless.

Triplicate Form:

Although triplicate forms sound straightforward, practically triplicate forms transfer the process of referring a patient from provider to patient or patient’s skin. The patient is left with the challenge of coordinating between physician offices – calling referral coordinators, faxing files to specialists’ office. Often a patient will have to request an appointment with multiple specialists which means sending sensitive patient information to specialists office who may not be taking care of the patient at all.

Sharing patient information is crucial in the medical referral process, but the systems that the healthcare providers use are incompetent to do a fast transfer of patient file and transfer it securely to authorized providers.
Hospitals need to establish clear-cut procedures in case of sharing patient information. Such a procedure should be able to track the flow of patient data and establish standard norms and practices to minimize the possibilities of compromising data.

Why Referral Matters for Population Health?

Population Health has been the buzzword for some time now and is used excessively by healthcare providers of all kinds and large employers amongst others. One reason for this is, of course, the concept is in itself broad and can include many things.

The basic concept of population health can be defined as understanding healthcare needs of a patient population and proactive intervention based on group variations of healthcare requirements to achieve population health quality outcomes.

Population Health Management proposes a holistic approach to healthcare delivery and better outcome, that is the reason why managing referral network becomes important in the process.

Ensure Continuity of Care

The Providers participating in a population health model have a bigger stake in the continuity of care their patient population has been receiving.National statistics on referral indicates more than 40% of the referred patients do not go to recommended specialists therefore maybe unsettling to general providers. A referral Management solution can most definitely improve those numbers or at least identify the reasons why patients are reluctant to see a specialist.

Keeping the PCP in the Loop

An intelligent medical referral solution allows PCPs to consult with the specialist and make an informed decision in directing patient care. Referral management solution will ensure a good level of communication during and after the referral is complete. Primary providers in the absence of a medical referral solution have no means of knowing the status of the referral at regular intervals. After a referral Primary provider may not be able to know the specialist’s diagnosis and understand the outcome of the process closing the referral loop

Patient Population Requirements

The PCPs who consult several patients a day have no reliable well-documented source to understand the various needs of the population that they serve. The result of lack of capabilities will push PCPs to refer patients to specialists outside of their network to serve and address the needs of a patient.

Employing Analytics

Identifying the right data set from different sources to achieve the measureable outcome is not an easy task. Healthcare industry is slowly adapting to new age technologies and leveraging data insights from the information gathered by analytics tools. For example, if a PCP is able to evaluate the data from the past 6 to 12 months, it will help him understand the strength, weakness and yield more revenue opportunities for the practice and prevent revenue leakage through referrals made outside of the network.

Create and Manage your Medical Referral Network Better!

Referral Management Solution helps providers to send patient referrals and to keep track of them. The purpose of the solution is to achieve a better outcome by improving communication and coordination between healthcare providers and patients.
Electronic Referrals or e-Referral enables endless patient information sharing throughout the care continuum in a secured way without violating HIPAA complaint. It also makes hospital referral process simple, manageable and reviewable at any given point.

Referral software integrates with EMR and will soon eliminate paperwork and documentation. A study suggests that paperless referrals have increased the follow-up rates up to 30-40%.
The Healthcare process workflow is considered to be one of the most challenging environments with regards to the complexity and security involved, Referral Solution helps to extemporize the hospital’s process flow and enables quick referrals.

The followings are the features of Referral Solution:

1. Better Access

The focus of Referral software is to improve the doctor-patient communication to provide better care and to improve health outcome. Physicians can send seamless referrals within or outside the network and the patients can communicate to their specialist anytime. This endless access helps patients to engage better in self-care.

2. Manage Referrals

Referral Solution helps to send right information to the right person at the right time. It also helps the provider to manage the workflow of information back and forth. PCP who usually initiates the referral can view the referral history and can track and drill down to check the status in detail for any number of referrals initiated from their facility.

3. E-Consultation

E-consultation reduces unnecessary face-to-face hospital visits. The well -designed Referral Solution makes it easy for patients and caregivers to exchange messages and medical diagnostic attachments like X-rays, screening images, and clinical notes with the specialists. A specialist or PCP can instantly get connected to their patient for e-consultation either via texts, calls, or video calls.

4. Reminders and Alerts Notification

Both physicians and patients get reminders about their upcoming scheduled meetings. The solution will allow you to manage all these alerts. Automated alerts are also sent to keep physicians informed if they miss any alerts or in case of emergency.

5. Schedule Appointments

The physician can quickly fix appointments with their patients if they are under risk conditions. Scheduled appointments can be managed online through portals in case if they want to postpone or cancel the meeting after seeing improvements in patient’s health condition.

6. Post Feedback and Loop Closure

Feedback along with all treatment details will be sent back to the referred PCP from the specialist for EMR update. Once the patient record is updated PCP will close the referral loop.
Some hospitals find reducing referral leakage and readmissions after implementing Referral Management Solution at their practice.

7. Referral Leakage

Medical records are highly confidential and it requires a safe and secure transfer. Also, the probability of leakage of data is high when PCP is looking at multiple cases on a given day.

In order to avoid leakage, providers need to update the physician’s directory list frequently.
This problem can be solved by encrypting the file with a password. People who have credentials are the only ones who will be able to access, view and share the patient record.

HealthViewX Referral Management Solution helps to send referrals secure and seamlessly, provide quick access to patient data, send notifications and alerts, and share information throughout to ensure closure of referral loop.

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