Patients are central to the healthcare industry. Today, unlike what we have seen earlier, the patients are surrounded by world-class facilities and cutting-edge technologies, with the help of which, they can now access the best patient care available at an arm's length.


10-best-practices-for-collecting-patient-payments

Whether it is their appointments, checkups, tests, medical reports collection, patient information access, and more, the patient access system has improved significantly. With the boom of the internet, the emergence of the leading-edge technologies, and continued research and development activities in medical science, patients are extended the care facilities they deserve.


The patient access system is still improving each day the more. With fresh and innovative ideas and strategies being implemented with each passing second, some of them are simply standing out to be future-proof and more efficient than the others.


Patient Access and How it is Growing!


Patient access can be simply defined as the access for the patients to proper medical care facilities. A proper patient access system allows the patients and their families to access the best healthcare service possible without many hassles. A growing patient access system implies that the patients are growing in terms of information and are evolving to be more empowered to take charge of their own health without much external intervention.


Yes, smartphones, the internet, and the technologies that surround us have made humans quite self-reliant, but it is the real-time care providers, the practices, and other healthcare units, which need to extend an easy and effective patient access system. This will actually help the patients to be more confident about their health and will improve the overall quality of health too.


The drive for patient access system is now a lot more popular than it was earlier. The global patient access solutions market was last registered at $1.6 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow by 8.5% CAGR, reaching $2.4 bn by 2025. This encourages practices and other medical care units all the more to prioritize the patient access system, and make it efficient and easy for the patients to use.


Now, you might be new to patient access systems and healthcare services, and how it works. Furthermore, you might also have focused on the patient access system earlier but it all didn't work out to deliver the best services for the patients. However, you need not worry about them all because here we have brought a step-by-step guide to the patient access system. This guide will help bolster your existing patient access system or form a new and effective patient access system at ease.


How to improve your patient access system step-by-step?


If you are looking to improve the patient access system at your practice, then here's the stepwise guide that you can keep in handy. So, without further ado, let's dive into the steps now:


Start with bettering the patient appointments


As it comes right at the first of the patient's journey, patient appointment really stands absolutely both for the patients and the practices crucial. The appointments of the patients and how they are scheduled forms a sizeable portion of the patient experiences. Booking an appointment is central to the patient access system and should be taken care of well.


According to the recent reports, more than 80% of the patients like to schedule their appointments via secure web services. This is the reason why you need to have digital appointment scheduling services at your practice.


These appointments should be transparent, and stand as a procedure with the help of which the patients can book, change and cancel their appointments at their will. About 68% of the patients want to go with the practices that help them to book, change or cancel their appointments online, and your practice cannot be an exception to the same.


Digitalize the patient check-ins and intakes


Patient check-ins and intakes comes right next in the flow of the patient's journey that they need to access. The patient check-in and intake procedure generally are ill-reputed to be really lengthy. This is where your practice need to stand out. Choosing GrowPractice, which offers cutting-edge medical office, patient and practice management solutions, can be an effective choice that will help ease the patient intake, check-in procedures, and more.


Both the patient intake and checkin solutions need to be secure too along with being fast and effective. This is because of the sensitive patient information that it deals with. All of which is handled professionally by GrowPractice, which is the reason why it is so popular among the practices. It has already saved 500+ priceless hours for the providers, which are otherwise lost while going through the patient appointments, check-ins and intakes.


Improve the patient workflow


The patient workflow is something that the practices almost always fail to chalk out. This is because most practices do not track the workflow of their patients. However, this is something that you can work out well with GrowPractice.


The effective medical office solutions by GrowPractice helps monitor the patient workflow and extensively help the practices with the same. Improving the patient workflow significantly adds up to better the patient experiences by keeping them engaged and helping them with the best possible route to get the best of their healthcare journey.


Bring transparency in costs and in patient wait times


84% patients consider the wait times as a critical component in their healthcare journey. Over 30% of the patients have even walked out of their appointments primarily due to long wait times. These wait times need to be reduced and a transparency is to be brought in when it comes to patient wait times. This will not only help the patients understand their provider and how they value them but also help the providers gain credibility and retain patients in the long run.


We all know how the cost of healthcare is rising every year. However, to speak of another truth is to reveal that nearly 77% of the patients find the healthcare costs quite unpredictable. On another survey, it is further revealed that 65% of the patients consider the transparency of healthcare costs as critically important. All of these are reasons enough why, in your practice, you need to maintain transparency in costs and in wait times.


Extend easy and effective access to EHR/PM software


The patients today are more concerned than they ever were. Over 78% of the patients have mentioned that they have used a patient portal.


Electronic Health Record (EHR) or Practice Management software are essential for today's practices.


Over 83% of patients who have used patient portals utilised them to access their test results, while 59.3% of patients took a chance of viewing the personal health record through these portals.


Look after the patient engagement


Engaging the patients is something that you should not miss out on simply because they are your customers and they need proper medical aid, and a good and encouraging environment to cheer up.


In order to improve patient engagement at your medical practice, these are some important strategies that you can embrace. This can be done by :


• Behaving well and attending to the patients every now and then

• Making effective resources easily accessible to them

• Keeping things transparent with the patients

• Removing all the hurdles that the patients face

• Offering them with easy patient portals

• Reducing the patient wait time

• Bringing shared-decision in the play

• Keeping an engagement plan handy


Bolster the social media presence and other contact options


How the patients can reach a medical practice plays a great role in influencing the decision of the patients to go for the practice for their healthcare issues. It also makes up a significant portion of the patients' experience.


A practice that has a wide presence across a range of different channels like WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, along with the traditional mediums like phone, SMS, email, and more, stands a higher chance of being chosen by the patients. These practices also have a huge potential of retaining these patients because they are easier to reach.


Accept patient feedback and reviews


Extending promising healthcare to the patients is not the be all and end all for the practices. The medical providers or practices must also accept the patient feedback and reviews wilfully.


The feedback and reviews that the patients leave after the end of their journeys are really important. These reviews help the patients realise their value in the ecosystem.


The patient feedback and reviews also reveal tons of patient information that can be leveraged by the practices to improve their services and better serve the patients in future. The easy acceptance and implementation of the procedures as per the patient feedback and reviews received will also go a long way to enhance the patient access system of your practice.


Prominent challenges you need to overcome to better patient access system!


Here's a look at some of the prominent challenges that most practices face while they look to better the patient access system:


• Shortage of medical staff

• Lack of digitalisation

• Odd/inaccessible physical location of the practices

• Uninformed medical staff

• Lack of practice access for the patients online

• Natural calamities

• Unprecedented digital issues


Though some of the above-mentioned challenges are not in the hands of the medical staff, managers and medical practices, all of the others can be monitored and improved. Effective medical office solution providers like GrowPractice further help straighten out the problems for the practices, leading to building a promising patient access system that benefits the patients as well as the practices.


Choose Class-Apart Patient and Practice Management Solution with GrowPractice and Gear up the Patient Access System!


GrowPractice is a trusted medical office solution provider that provides simple and effective patient and practice management solutions for the medical practices. The GrowPractice solutions are not only crafted to reduce the hassles for the patients but are innovated to help practices extend the best possible healthcare solutions to their patients.


The solutions of GrowPractice are also trusted by numerous US Federal Government Agencies along with a wide range of medical practices that operate around the globe.


If you are wondering how the GrowPractice solutions would reinforce your patient access system, then here's a glimpse into the medical office solutions that GrowPractice would offer your practice:


• Digital patient appointment schedulers with easy booking, rescheduling and cancellation facilities

• Online patient check-ins and intakes with no time wasters

• 2-way texting facilities for patients

• Easy and effective collection of patient feedback and reviews Customized patient workflow for an improved patient experience

• Flexible online payment facilities to improve collection rates

• Accurate and automatic input of patient information

• Absolute security of Protected Health Information (PHI)