And, more importantly, at least half of that spending is considered “wasteful.”1 Much of that waste is due to the overuse of paper. A report from the McKinsey Global Institute estimated that the U.S. healthcare system costs more than “$650 billion over and above” what is expected for the nation’s economy—with over $90 billion in wasteful costs due to “inefficient and redundant” administrative practices2.
This unnecessary wastefulness (and cost) has gotten considerably better in recent years as a result of the federal government’s mandate for healthcare organizations to move to Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems. But that step has only solved a small percentage of the problem. Paper has a life of its own inside every healthcare organization and can become extremely difficult to manage, particularly when it still reigns supreme in areas such as registration, signature capture, insurance verification, billing services, informed consent and discharge paperwork.
Your progress in creating a more efficient, cost-effective organization doesn’t have to stop with EHR. There are plenty of areas for improvements beyond the point of care. Low-hanging opportunities to cut down on waste, protect PHI and improve patient satisfaction. It all starts with ancillary services such as patient registration and informed consent forms.
Here are 11 tips to help you on the path to reducing your organization’s reliance on paper and reaping all the rewards a paperless environment has to offer:
1. Start easy and small. Registration is a great place to begin this journey because it generally requires minimal resources and can be fit into a discretionary budget
2. Identify a champion to advocate for and design processes. Having strong leadership in place will enable you to ramp up the project and see results more quickly
3. Assign IT team members to a forms committee to standardize data capture fields
4. Project manage and understand critical standardized forms, and associated data fields for routing and upload to the EHR (HIPAA Terms, Insurance forms, etc.)
5. Interview staff members and clinicians to understand ancillary workflow processes in depth
6. Formulate a training program and paradigm appropriate for administrative staff and clinicians
7. Outline a robust security protocol for these digitized records, investing in staff training for securing these records (both from a physical security and cybersecurity perspective)
8. Assign team members to continuously monitor and examine IT workflows to eliminate unnecessary data capture or data exchanges that may increase risk
9. Analyze patient responsiveness and HCAHPS scores, and install a continuous quality improvement process to streamline user-experience
10. Create a roadmap based upon implementation success to apply this model to other areas of the enterprise
11. Expand digitization processes to surrounding business departments, including: billing, pharmacy, radiology, lab, and other departments surrounding the point of care
Digitizing registration, signature capture and other ancillary processes is a great way to continue your efforts to reduce paper in your organization because it’s a low dollar, high value investment. It improves security and increases patient satisfaction. That means savings – and consequently, more money that’s available for what’s important: providing the best quality care.
Chris Joyce is Director of Healthcare Solutions with Bottomline Technologies where he defines and executes the product strategy which is aligned with customer and partner initiatives. He has over 17 years of experience in healthcare, forms automation, and patient registration. Prior to joining Bottomline, Chris founded Logical Progression, a healthcare technology company that focused on tablet-based mobile documentation software for hospitals and clinical trials. Chris enjoys applying technology to improve the patient and clinician experience and help organizations more easily adoption electronic medical records.
1. F Wikler, Elizabeth, Peter Basch, and David M. Cutler, “Paper Cuts: Reducing Health Care Administrative Costs.” Center for American Progress, June 11, 2012. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/healthcare/report/2012/06/11/11658/paper-cuts/
2. http://www.healthaffairs.org/healthpolicybriefs/brief. php?brief_id=82
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