HEALTHeLINK conducted a Practice Workflow Pilot with three primary and three specialty care practices. The pilot practices implemented specific workflows to address pre-visit planning, onboarding new patients, obtaining information to support referrals/prior authorizations, and using HEALTHeLINK services such as alert notifications. As a result, these practices saw an increase in practice efficiency, a reduction in some practice expenses, improvement in the quality of patient visits and higher staff and patient satisfaction.
The pilot metrics showed a decrease in the amount of time spent searching for patient information through HEALTHeLINK’s patient record lookup functionality. From 1.7 hours to 7 hours a week in time was saved by the pilot practices with patient chart preparation and pre-visit planning. By having test results and records available in advance or quickly accessible via HEALTHeLINK, practices experienced a reduction in patient cycle time, from three minutes to 40 minutes depending on the practice.
HEALTHeLINK’s Practice Workflow Toolkit can assist practices that do not have standard processes and workflows in place, especially for pre-visit planning. The Toolkit contains several checklists (e.g., chart prep) and other tools for practices to choose from to help assure the availability of relevant clinical information at the time of a patient’s visit and elimination of waits and delays caused by a lack of patient information.
The Practice Workflow Toolkit User Guide and associated materials are available upon request.