The Importance Of A Good Patient Intake Solution For Healthcare Companies

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As the owner of a healthcare business, one of your primary goals is to attract new patients to your company. You need to generate leads and get them to register with your business as often as possible. This helps you establish a loyal base of patients while drawing in new ones all the time.

The secret to doing this lies with a good patient intake solution, often supported by practice management software that helps streamline registration and patient data collection. We’ll talk about why this is so important, as well as touching on how you can implement one. However, before all of that, let’s take a brief look at what we mean by a patient intake solution.

What is a patient intake solution?

Patient intake solutions form a core part of the healthcare system. They exist as a means to get new patients to register for your healthcare services. This can involve filling in forms, carrying out basic health assessments, and so on. 

The idea is that your healthcare business gains as much information as possible about new patients before they book an initial consultation. It’s a way of letting you figure out the individual’s main needs and tailoring the consultation – and any further treatments – to their specific requirements. 

All the while, you’re storing important details on file, like their contact information, medical needs, etc. 

What are the benefits of a patient intake solution?

You may wonder why a good patient intake solution is necessary. Why can’t people walk up to your clinic and immediately book an appointment for five minutes? Why do you need to implement a system at all?!

Well, having a patient intake solution will benefit your healthcare business in many ways, such as: 

• Ensure you comply with regulations – A good intake system helps you comply with essential healthcare regulations, like HIPAA to protect their privacy. 
• Improve the patient experience – Your solution gives the patient a better experience as you learn more about them before they see you for the first time. This means you’re already equipped to deal with their specific issues and can get straight to the point rather than wasting time filling in forms with them! 
• Reduce waiting times – Having people fill in forms before they visit your business means you can reduce waiting times in the clinic. Patients who register online can come in and sit down without needing to do anything else. If every patient does this, you run a much more efficient company. 
• Direct patients to the right people – This ties in with the overall benefit of improving the patient experience, but a good intake system helps you direct patients to the right people for their needs. As an example, if you run a chiropractor business, a patient’s intake form may indicate that they need a specific service offered by one of your colleagues. They’ll be booked in with them right away, helping them work with the right people offering the right services. 
• Free up staff time – From an operational perspective, the best patient intake systems eliminate the need for staff to spend ages handling records or manually entering data into a system. Patients simply fill in their details and it automatically gets uploaded to the system. This gives your staff more time to handle calls or deal with other tasks around the business. It provides them with a better balance at work while ensuring your business runs smoothly. 

How do you implement a good patient intake solution?

Implementing a good patient intake solution is all about setting up a patient registration system. This is a digital system allowing patients to register online from the comfort of their homes. It’s linked to your website, so people find your business and click a button to fill in a registration form. 

All they have to do is provide the necessary data in the form before submitting it. The system adds their details to the register, and you’re notified of a new patient. From here, they can use the online system to schedule a first appointment/consultation, and you can look at their form to work out what their main problems/needs are. 

It’s a simple approach that means people don’t have to enter your business and queue up to get a registration form, and then spend a good 10 minutes filling it in in the waiting room. For surgical pathways specifically, practices can benefit from incorporating dedicated perioperative software into their intake workflows to automate pre-operative screening, monitor risk, and ensure patients are optimally prepared before they arrive. Some companies may split their patient intake solution into two parts: a pre-registration form, followed by a more detailed registration form. Both are online, but the first one asks for basic information while the second wants a more detailed look at their health.

In conclusion, good patient intake solutions help healthcare companies run with more efficiency. They also give a better experience to each patient and make it easier for people to access the services offered by the business.