Say Goodbye to Paper-Based Workflows and Reduce Burnout

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Many healthcare organizations struggle with managing paper records — particularly for informed consent. Electronic consent solutions offer a better way.

If you were asked to choose between filling out an informed consent document either on paper or online, you’d likely choose the latter. After all, electronic forms are simpler, more convenient, and more reliable than their paper counterparts. But for many healthcare organizations, paper processes remain in place despite the associated risks of waste, lost documents, and human error.

With electronic health solutions rapidly becoming the norm, healthcare organizations have found that moving from paper to electronic informed consent makes a huge difference in their work. It not only reduces the risk of human error, but it also helps improve efficiency. As a result, a digital approach gives healthcare professionals the ability to focus on what matters most: care.

A Farewell to Paper Forms

Even though most healthcare organizations started using electronic health records (EHRs) more than a decade ago, many still rely on paper documents for their workflows — particularly when obtaining informed consent. Despite consistently using paper documents, most healthcare organizations aren’t happy with the process.

Paperwork burdens are one of the leading causes of burnout among clinicians. Nearly half of all clinicians suffer from burnout regularly because paper processes create unnecessary work and require attention that could be focused elsewhere. It also creates a variety of communication inefficiencies that can be costly for healthcare organizations.

Thankfully, there is some good news: With the right partner and an electronic consent solution that integrates with your EHR to collect informed consent documents digitally, you can significantly improve the way your organization operates. With a digital-first approach, team members can easily assign the right forms and deliver them to the right patients on any device of their choosing. Fields are automatically filled in with relevant demographic information, minimizing the chance of incorrect information being entered. Documents are far less likely to go missing, and everyone saves time — all of which can make a huge difference when it comes to burnout.

This might sound overly optimistic for something as simple as switching away from paper for informed consent forms and other medical documents, but it’s the truth. Think of it this way: You might only save 10 minutes per patient by following a digital-first approach in the process of obtaining informed consent. That may not sound like much when you view it as only one interaction, but informed consent is part of every single procedure a hospital performs. Subtract 10 minutes from each of your daily procedures, and you’ll quickly see how electronic informed consent enables you to devote significantly more time to other work.

That kind of added efficiency could make transformative workflow improvements in your organization. By eliminating paper-based workflows and switching to electronic informed consent, you can create a more efficient and accurate care experience with the added benefit of reducing burnout in healthcare professionals.

For many healthcare workers, these extra minutes in a day are priceless. Team members will be able to shift to more patient-centric activities: the reason healthcare workers got into the field in the first place.

It’s time to embrace the future of healthcare and say goodbye to managing paper records for informed consent. To learn more about our electronic informed consent solution, download our whitepaper on the topic.

How the Pandemic Is Pushing Healthcare Into the Modern Age

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Organizations are embracing the power of digital technology in healthcare, but there is one notable (and avoidable) exception — paper consent forms.

In recent years, many industries have started making the transition to digital. Healthcare organizations, however, face challenges that make that transition difficult. While most organizations see the benefits of electronic health records, which have been mandatory in the industry for years, healthcare has been slow to adopt other new technologies.

This is understandable. The number of hurdles healthcare organizations have historically faced when adopting new processes is high, and competing technologies across hospital systems and medical equipment have made it difficult to create a unified, cohesive workflow.

With the COVID-19 pandemic pushing much of patient care online — and patients increasingly wanting to see digital healthcare options — traditional approaches may finally be changing.

Embracing Digital Technology in Healthcare

While telehealth was already growing in popularity before the pandemic, it quickly became mainstream as the virus spread through the country. Until recently, reimbursements on telehealth visits were so low that most hospitals hadn’t invested in the technology to provide this offering to patients.

As a result, there was no real incentive to switch over to virtual visits — even if they were far more convenient for everyone involved.

Now that everyone is staying home whenever possible, virtual visits are not only convenient but also safer. Healthcare organizations are pushing telehealth in a way they never have before, and states are enacting laws to ensure more access to these services.

Telehealth’s evolution has become more of a revolution, with the industry moving in record time to make it an essential part of patient care. The new challenge for healthcare organizations will be transforming the rest of their workflows to match it. While the pandemic might be responsible for pushing healthcare into the future, we won’t return to the past when the world gets back to its (new) normal.

Why a Digital-First Approach Is Crucial

What are these other workflows, then? One of the most significant is informed consent. You might have the best electronic health records (EHR) system and virtual visit technology in the business, but a reliance on paper-based informed consent processes will create unnecessary bottlenecks and put undue burdens on both patients and staff. These documents that have to be filled out and signed by both patient and doctor before every procedure are a critical part of keeping care compliant, but they’re collected on physical paper more often than not. Why does this matter?

Consider this: If a patient were set to undergo a skin biopsy, he or she would go into their provider’s office to have a pre-operation appointment and sign all of the necessary consent forms. In light of the pandemic, these appointments can now take place completely via the phone or a computer. But there is still one obstacle to this process being completely virtual — signing the physical paper consent document.

Suppose a healthcare organization still relies on paper consent forms instead of electronic informed consent. In that case, the patient has to print out the form from an email, sign it, and either mail it back or (more likely) physically bring it to the office. This undermines the efficiency and safety of the digital approach solely because informed consent wasn’t electronic.

Now is the time for healthcare providers to transform their workflows from top to bottom and adopt a digital-first approach to informed consent. It can create more efficient workflows and move your organization further into digital healthcare. Reach out today to learn more about our solution!

 

 

Informed Consent White Paper:Electronic Informed Consent’s Role in a Robust Telehealth Offering

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: 

 

Dessiree Paoli is a senior solution manager at Interlace Health, a company that transforms workflows by providing clinicians and patients with digital healthcare solutions. She has more than 18 years of experience in driving strategic marketing initiatives and developing integrated campaigns. She also has worked in healthcare for more than 12 years, including experience with a large children’s hospital, a national urgent care chain, and several HIT organizations.

 

How a Digital-First Approach Also Puts People First

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By moving away from paper processes and implementing a digital-first approach, medical professionals can make an impact on patient care.

Last year, a study conducted with 551 orthopedic patients aimed to answer one key question: “Why is educating patients important?” Participants were surveyed about their satisfaction with their care and then given a test to determine how well they understood their upcoming treatment. Six months later, patients took another survey to assess how they had fared.

The study consistently found that patients who were informed enough to take a more active role in their care decisions were not only much happier with their care, but they also ended up with better results. Because medical regulations require healthcare organizations to obtain informed consent before every procedure, these results should be encouraging. In theory, at least.

There’s a problem: Informed consent processes are far from consistent in healthcare. Only 36% of patients in the study were found to be well-informed about their care. Despite everyone having to sign similar consent forms before receiving treatment, the actual quality of the information patients received varied widely.

There are numerous reasons someone might not be properly informed about a procedure. They can vary from doctor to doctor, patient to patient, and hospital to hospital, which makes this concern hard to address on a larger scale. However, specific operational improvements can help healthcare organizations focus more on engaging patients in their care.

One of those involves informed consent and, specifically, moving away from paper consent forms and implementing electronic informed consent. This one change can make a big difference because it helps clinicians save time, work more efficiently, and focus more on care.

How Going Digital Puts the Emphasis Back on People

With electronic informed consent, healthcare professionals can spend more time on care and less on paperwork. Electronic forms can automatically be populated with relevant information, eliminating the burden for staff members who normally have to write in the same details they already have on file for every one of these documents.

This is a small difference for a single form, but it adds up to a lot of time saved when you think of how often your team has to obtain informed consent. On top of that, electronic forms reduce the risk of human error and of misplaced or lost files — all of which can affect patient care.

While electronic informed consent won’t directly let patients take more ownership of their healthcare decisions or better engage with their providers, it will help providers gather and store their data more accurately and efficiently. Ultimately, this shift will give providers more time to devote to care. By taking a digital-first approach to consent, healthcare organizations can free up time to focus on what matters most: the people.

Contact us to learn more about how we can help digitize your informed consent process.

 

Informed Consent White Paper:Electronic Informed Consent’s Role in a Robust Telehealth Offering

Where Do Your Consent Forms Keep Going?

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An overreliance on paper forms leads to inefficient workflows and impacts patient care. Here are a few reasons to embrace electronic informed consent.

You can’t perform a procedure or surgery on a patient without informed consent, yet one study found that nearly two-thirds of patients don’t have their signed consent forms when they go in for surgery. As a result, those forms need to be signed and collected all over again. This is a troubling trend — one largely caused by an over-reliance on paper processes.

When healthcare organizations use paper to collect and record information, the risk is high that it could be lost, damaged, or misplaced. Staff members might accidentally write incorrect information or miss important fields altogether. In addition to those risks, it also tends to create an inefficient workflow.

Residents responsible for obtaining and delivering consent forms, for example, might find themselves called away to other areas of the hospital before their tasks are finished. Filled-out forms could then be hastily stuffed into their pockets and forgotten altogether — at least until the OR comes looking for them before a procedure.

Unfortunately, this story illustrates a common theme across many healthcare organizations that is no fault of their own. Just think of the numerous steps involved in creating, maintaining, and managing paper records. From printing to labeling to obtaining signatures to verifying to scanning to uploading into a patient file, there are so many possibilities for things to go amiss. Healthcare can be a stressful and complex field, and paper forms just aren’t conducive to the work providers do.

Missing Consent Forms: More Than a Minor Inconvenience

A single missing consent form might not seem like a huge deal, but consider what happens if one form goes missing every month. One every week? One every day? These hypothetical scenarios are realities for many medical institutions. When the Joint Commission surveyed hospitals in 2016, more than 500 were found to have compliance issues related to informed consent forms.

That said, what seems like a potentially small problem can quickly become a serious one financially, strategically, and emotionally for healthcare organizations and staff members that struggle to meet compliance standards. According to one study, nearly half of all clinicians reported feeling burned out regularly, and the leading cause of that burnout was paperwork. When paperwork goes missing, roughly 14% of surgeries get delayed.

This is costly: Every single minute of delay in an operating room can cost a hospital $37. By that logic, a surgery pushed back only 10 minutes would cost a provider an extra $370. For a hospital with roughly 500 beds, that could add up to more than $3,000,000 annually.

What Providers Can Do

Thankfully, it’s never too late for healthcare organizations to start using electronic informed consent forms and remove paper from the equation altogether. Implementing a process that relies on electronic informed consent will positively impact patient care and improve the lives of your staff and leadership. How?

  • Mitigating the cost of surgical delays.
  • Decreasing the time staff members spend processing paperwork.
  • Reducing the cost of paper and processing.

Is your healthcare organization still relying on paper for the important process of informed consent? Contact us today to learn more about moving to an electronic process.

Informed Consent White Paper:Electronic Informed Consent’s Role in a Robust Telehealth Offering

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: 

 

Dessiree Paoli is a senior solution manager at Interlace Health, a company that transforms workflows by providing clinicians and patients with digital healthcare solutions. She has more than 18 years of experience in driving strategic marketing initiatives and developing integrated campaigns. She also has worked in healthcare for more than 12 years, including experience with a large children’s hospital, a national urgent care chain, and several HIT organizations.

Resolving Compliance Concerns in Healthcare Organizations

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Electronic informed consent can reduce many of the risks of using paper documents. Learn more about the benefits of integrating electronic health records.

Compliance in the healthcare industry is critical, and it’s a major part of running a successful organization. Failing a Joint Commission audit or getting a low score from CMS can have serious repercussions. It makes sense, then, that healthcare organizations would want to minimize their chances of running into compliance issues.

That starts with being aware of some of the most significant compliance risk areas in healthcare, including concerns like informed consent. It’s a mandatory process requiring healthcare organizations to have forms signed by both patients and doctors to confirm that all patients have been informed of the details of procedures — including any risks, potential benefits, and alternative forms of care available.

Any violation of informed consent is serious, but more than 500 organizations have failed their audits due to missing consent forms. It’s a startling number, though it’s not necessarily due to negligence or poor standards of care. Instead, the underlying cause of many of these cases ties back to something simple: paper.

Why Paper Is a Problem

Medical documents have been recorded and stored on paper for decades, so why do paper-related compliance issues occur? There have always been risks associated with paper documents, but paper was the only way to collect information and keep records for so long that many healthcare organizations have assumed those risks, done their best, and continued on with their work.

Over the years, technology has changed this. It has made it possible for healthcare organizations to see the vulnerabilities and inefficiencies associated with paper processes, easing the transition to more modern — and compliant — ways of doing things.

Think, for a moment, about a paper informed consent document. When organizations rely on paper processes, they struggle with the reality that paper forms are so easy to lose. Maybe a form gets stuffed in a pocket and forgotten about. Maybe it gets put in the wrong file or left behind in an emergency. Maybe someone spills coffee on it and then tosses it into a trash can. Regardless of what caused the loss of those documents, it’s often too late to do anything by the time someone realizes they’re gone.

Beyond the problem of misplacing paper documents, there’s also the issue of human error. Because every paper form has to be filled out and signed by various people, there’s plenty of room for mistakes. All it takes is one misspelled name or blank field to cause a violation of informed consent. Luckily, technology has made it possible to reduce the risk of using paper documents. Instead, healthcare organizations can handle all of these duties electronically.

Going Digital Can Help Ease Compliance Concerns

Electronic informed consent makes compliance simpler and stronger. When you don’t have to worry about a physical copy of paper, it’s much harder for forms to go missing. There’s also a reduced risk of error because electronic consent software is set up to populate a form’s fields with relevant demographic information. While going digital doesn’t guarantee compliance, it does greatly reduce many of the common compliance issues associated with paper.

The benefits of integrating electronic health records with our electronic consent solution are significant. In fact, more than 1,100 healthcare organizations have already experienced those benefits firsthand. Reach out today to talk with us more about electronic informed consent and how it could transform your healthcare organization.

 

Informed Consent White Paper:Electronic Informed Consent’s Role in a Robust Telehealth Offering

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: 

Tommy Hunkins is a marketing professional who enjoys all things digital and automated. He spends his free time with his two chocolate labs, Booker and Hutch.

COVID-19 & Cyber-Attacks: Being Prepared for Downtime when there is no Down Time

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Another healthcare crisis making headlines, one that cannot be controlled with social distancing or even a vaccine, is cyber-attacks.

A recent article in The New York Times unravels how a wave of damaging attacks on hospitals upended the lives of patients with cancer and other ailments. This latest wave of cyber threats against the U.S. healthcare system is part of a growing trend. With COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations climbing nationwide, experts say healthcare providers are dangerously vulnerable to more cyber-attacks.

The pandemic has certainly generated a wave of new technologies that are completely changing the practice of modern medicine. Telehealth, virtual check-ins, and electronic forms completion from home are becoming the norm – and most patients and staff have embraced these changes with open arms. But this sudden move to virtual care, does not come without challenges. In fact, it has created, in many cases, a ‘perfect storm’ for cybercriminals.

These rapid technological advances have punched holes in tried-and-true security perimeters and have created more entry points for hackers to target. Quickly pushing more patient information to the cloud has opened doors to new vulnerabilities to cyber-attacks that have had yet to be considered.  As a result, many health systems have found themselves in a desperate and unexpected downtime situation.

According to a recent blog from CereCore, when it comes to downtime, it’s not a matter of if, but when. The blog summarizes through various industry experts that healthcare organizations must be well prepared in advance of an incident occurring. Hospitals should continue to function effectively when reverting to manual procedures during unplanned downtime or network disruption.

It is no surprise that downtime events in healthcare organizations can directly impact patient safety, revenue, staff productivity, and the patient experience. In fact, HIPAA regulations require organizations to “establish procedures to enable the continuation of critical business processes…while operating in emergency mode.” Yet, 43% of downtime procedures not being followed or not in place (JAMIA study).

Unplanned downtime can be a shock to your hospital’s system, as well as its finances. With each added minute, an idle EHR can dramatically impair the functionality of your hospital and, on average, cost an incredible $8,662 per minute.

The silver lining? There are solutions healthcare systems can put in place to be prepared to continue to operate efficiently during downtime.

Whether it be due to cyberattacks, scheduled system updates, EHR outages, or even a tornado, Interlace Health’s Downtime Solution enables staff to continue to admit patients and complete required forms while the main HIS system is down.

Interlace Health allows health systems to maintain an automated and efficient workflow to register new patients during downtime and get that information quickly into your EHR when you are back online. The solution makes it easy to maintain continuity of care with clinical documentation during downtime.

Having the right downtime solutions in place is crucial to securing and building resilience to the healthcare infrastructure long after the COVID-19 pandemic ends.

For more information and to see what our downtime process looks like in action, watch our on-demand webinar presentation: Cyberattacks and COVID-19: Is Your Health System Prepared for Downtime?

 

 

 

Downtime Webinar

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: 

Over the past five years, Lauren Ziegler has been a member of Interlace Health’s Marketing team, coordinating and executing marketing communication initiatives, such as copywriting and content management, public and media relations, social media, and corporate communications. She has over a decade of experience in working with technology companies. Lauren is passionate about helping the healthcare community understand Interlace’s Health’s value, vision, and commitment to improving experiences for providers, patients, and staff.

3 Lessons Learned from the Explosion of Telehealth

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As the COVID-19 pandemic led to stay-at-home orders across the country and a need to lessen exposure and strain on the healthcare system, healthcare organizations shut their doors to non-emergency visits. This sudden change pushed telehealth from an evolution to a revolution overnight.  

While telehealth has been steadily growing in the industry over the past few years, the pandemic has pushed it to new heights, with virtual visits increasing by 4,345% in March and April alone.

In a recent article featured on Healthcare Business Today, I shared the below three takeaways from the unprecedented growth of telehealth and how it will shape the future of healthcare.

  1. Telehealth goes beyond virtual visits. While virtual visits are one of the most well-known aspects of telehealth, remote monitoring and patient portals, as an example, enable providers to take a proactive approach to patient care in ways that traditional health services simply cannot.
  2. Virtual care saves lives. Telehealth visits limit exposure to COVID-19 for patients and healthcare workers alike, but remote monitoring technology can also go a long way in treating contagious patients without risking lives.
  3. More work needs to be done on infrastructure. When the pandemic hit, healthcare organization had to move fast. Going forward, blending digital solutions with existing processes needs to be carefully examined to create effective, and user-friendly methods for patients to access their data and communicate with their doctors.

COVID-19 has done a lot to highlight telehealth’s potential, but it has also clarified how much more work is needed. As we move into a post COVID-19 world, organizations will need to rethink all of their processes through a digital lens.

View the full article in Healthcare Business Today.

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: 

 

Dessiree Paoli is a senior solution manager at Interlace Health, a company that transforms workflows by providing clinicians and patients with digital healthcare solutions. She has more than 18 years of experience in driving strategic marketing initiatives and developing integrated campaigns. She also has worked in healthcare for more than 12 years, including experience with a large children’s hospital, a national urgent care chain, and several HIT organizations.

The COVID-19 Vaccine Has Arrived, but Remote Patient Intake is Here to Stay

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The FDA recently gave emergency approval to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for COVID-19, and more vaccines are under review for the same approval now. This is a major accomplishment, a potential light at the end of a very long tunnel. With these effective vaccines, we can hopefully — sooner rather than later — get back to in-person work and school, and spending time (face-to-face) with family and friends. But, will patients want to get back to sitting in crowded waiting rooms before appointments? Probably not. As a healthcare consumer, I am not interested in that.

There are some aspects of everyday life that will be changed forever because of this pandemic, and the healthcare patient intake process is likely to be one of those things. 

Healthcare organizations have been seeking to incorporate technology into their practice for a while, and the need to move care online due to the pandemic has accelerated these plans. Healthcare organizations want to give their staff more time to focus on patient-centric needs, and patients expect technology infused into their healthcare. I expect this. I can order groceries online, I can bank online, I can have my dinner delivered to my doorstep within minutes with the touch of a button, and the list goes on. We live in a world that has grown accustomed to having the power of technology in the palm of our hand, and it would only make sense that I could engage with my healthcare provider online. This is where Interlace Health steps in. 

My role as a Solution Architect at Interlace Health is to talk with healthcare organizations, understand their needs, and work with them to find the best solution to meet those needs. I connect with hospitals and health systems of all sizes, who are all striving to engage patients safely, and remotely through technology. It is exciting to be a part of this innovation and hear perspectives from people in various roles across different areas of healthcare organizations. I wanted to share some insight I recently gathered from conversations with a few healthcare professionals here. 

  • This fall, I spoke with a Director of Patient Registration at a mid-sized health system. She was focused on reducing patient wait times. She said it can take anywhere from 6 to 15 minutes to register each patient in their ambulatory clinics and the patients need to complete up to 9 forms, 11 if they have Medicare. They see about 350 patients per day at their clinics, that is a lot of time and a lot of paper. Her team was very excited to see Interlace Health’s Remote Patient Intake Solution. Empowering patients to complete their registration forms remotely, before their appointment, saves patients and staff time, increases patient satisfaction and safety, and of course, eliminates printing paper and shared surfaces in the clinic. In fact, hospitals that implement a pre-registration process have seen a 60% reduction in patient wait times. 
  • Reducing wait times is just one of the advantages of remote patient intake, and the ability to text patients takes that a step further. The IT Director at a regional medical center loved Interlace Health’s ability to have no-contact registration and enable patients to bypass the waiting room all together with the option to send text messages to patients. He saw many advantages in the ability to allow patients to wait in their car and send a text when their exam room is ready. 
  • At another larger hospital I met with, the Patient Access Manager asked about collecting insurance information and co-payments in advance of the appointment. Their current-state workflow was calling the patient to collect the payment or having the patient sign a form saying they promise to pay. This often placed staff members in uncomfortable situations. They were intrigued to see that our solution lets the patient upload a photo of their insurance card and submit their co-payment at their convenience, any time before the visit. Surveys have found that 83% of patients prefer to pay their bills online.

The advantages of infusing technology and patient engagement into healthcare extend far beyond the necessity that stemmed from the pandemic. While the pandemic may have fast-tracked the digital patient intake process, it also brought to light the many benefits and the realization there is no going back. It is exciting to be a part of the work being done at Interlace Health to ease the process of transitioning to a remote patient intake process and drive real results for staff and their patients. 

 

For more information on a zero-contact registration process, download our whitepaper. 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: 

Ellie Silver is a Solution Architect at Interlace Health. In this role, Ellie provides expertise to healthcare organizations, incorporating Interlace Health solutions, services, and integration technologies to help optimize workflows for patients, providers, and staff. Her degree in Health Science combined with her experience as a Project Manager and End User Trainer enhances her abilities as an innovator in the healthcare IT industry. Ellie is enthusiastic about healthcare and is passionate about helping healthcare organizations create continuous success.

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