Posted by Karen Grace Larsen
If you thought electronic health records (EHRs) made every pediatrician's life easier, nearly three-quarters of them would disagree.
According to a study published by the Applied Clinical Informatics journal, 73.6% of pediatricians consider EHR documentation a major or moderate burden. The study also mentions how the use of EHRs has been linked to higher rates of physician burnout.
As a pediatrician tirelessly dedicated to nurturing young lives, you know every minute counts. To streamline your workflows, leverage cutting-edge technology, and harness data-driven automation, you need an EHR platform specifically designed for pediatric care.
Unlike generic EHRs, IMS for Pediatrics offers simplified workflows, intuitive interfaces, and insightful analytics to help you achieve greater practice efficiency and avoid the burdens associated with many mainstream EHR solutions.
What Is Practice Efficiency and How Do You Measure It?
In a study on practice efficiency and quality, Dr. David Fryefield defines practice efficiency as “first and foremost having the patient experience be as smooth a process as possible, where the right things happen in a timely fashion.”
But how do you know your pediatric office has achieved that? Here are a few things you can look into:
Documentation Time
Measure how long it takes pediatricians and staff to complete patient records and administrative tasks. With robust pediatric EHR solutions like IMS, you can use custom-built reports to see every provider’s documentation turnaround time and determine whether the team completes them in the ideal timeframe.
You can also look into the time your team spends per patient record to pinpoint areas that need fixing or streamlining. For example, you can equip a provider with IMSGo’s AI-powered transcription feature so they can automate the visit note documentation process and significantly improve their turnaround time.
Patient Flow and Appointment Management
Evaluate how well your practice handles scheduling, check-ins, and patient wait times. Use your pediatric EHR software to generate a comprehensive report on your clinic’s average wait time. Because you deal with the pediatric population, shorter wait times are crucial to improving patient satisfaction and overall experience.
You can use your system data to determine whether your practice is filling appointment slots optimally. Because canceled appointments can cause unnecessary gaps in your schedule, you may also want to generate reports on patient no-show rates so you can monitor and address them.
Patient Outcomes and Satisfaction
Ultimately, your practice’s efficiency should enhance patient outcomes and satisfaction. To gauge patient experience and satisfaction, send surveys and feedback forms promptly after their visit.
By tracking your patients’ progress, you can also check if your practice efficiency positively affects their health outcomes. Are they getting their vaccinations on time? Are they showing up to scheduled appointments? Are they adhering to recommended follow-up visits and treatments?
3 Key Strategies for Pediatric Practice Efficiency
Optimizing your pediatric office’s performance is much more complicated than it sounds. In addition to generating reports and analyzing data, you must implement strategies that enhance efficiency across all operations.
To help pediatricians like you achieve practice efficiency, the American Medical Association (AMA) recommends three actionable strategies from their Saving Time Playbook:
Stop Unnecessary Tasks
Eliminate tasks and modify processes that consume valuable time and resources. Simplifying workflows, reducing the number of clicks needed to complete tasks, and implementing automation can significantly streamline your pediatric practice.
If you’re unsure how to set this strategy into motion, your pediatric electronic health records software is an excellent place to start.
Using a well-designed EHR system can eliminate time-wasting tasks. An intuitive interface minimizes the number of clicks required for everyday tasks, speeding up documentation and patient management.
A top pediatrics EHR platform like IMS also allows you to automate routine tasks such as appointment reminders, prescription refills, and billing processes to free up time for patient care.
Share the Workload
Even after eliminating unnecessary tasks, you will likely still have plenty of work on your plate. Sharing the workload is the key to overcoming this challenge and freeing up your time to focus on your patients.
Healthcare interoperability allows all care team members to access up-to-date patient information quickly and easily. This connectivity allows teams to distribute tasks more effectively, reducing the burden on individual members. Leverage the connectivity and reach of healthcare interoperability by integrating your pediatric EHR system with labs, pharmacies, and other health networks.
Another strategy that helps ease your burden is empowering patients—or, in your case, their parents—to play an active role in their healthcare. Meditab’s patient platform, IMS Care, allows parents to schedule appointments, access their child’s medical records, and receive vaccination reminders directly from their mobile devices. Besides reducing your staff’s administrative workload, it also boosts patient engagement and satisfaction.
Convince Leadership to Take the Necessary Steps
Achieving meaningful and sustainable efficiency improvements requires leadership support. Secure buy-in from practice owners and managers by demonstrating how efficiency measures can improve quality of care, reduce burnout, enhance continuity, and deliver cost savings.
By adopting these AMA-recommended strategies and investing in a comprehensive pediatric-focused EHR system like IMS, practices can maximize productivity, minimize inefficiencies, and deliver better care for their young patients.
Why IMS Is the Best EHR for Pediatrics
According to survey data from the Pediatrician Life and Career Experience Study (PLACES), 9 out of 10 pediatricians believed improving their EHR system’s functionality would ease the administrative burden on providers. Meditab's pediatric-specific EMR/EHR platform, IMS, was designed precisely to address this need.
Voted as one of Black Book Market Research's top pediatric EHRs for 2024, IMS stands out as the best choice for pediatricians, specifically engineered to support the following aspects of your practice:
Specialty-Specific Workflows
Meticulously designed with pediatric offices in mind, IMS offers features that streamline and enhance your unique workflows.
With features like customizable templates, visually enhanced growth charts, medication dosing by weight, and access to age-based normative values, IMS helps make your day-to-day tasks faster and more convenient.
Compliance Requirements
Meeting regulatory standards is critical in pediatric care, and IMS is fully equipped to ensure compliance with the latest healthcare regulations.
IMS’s robust reporting and practice analytics feature allows you to manage and monitor your practice’s quality measures, performance, and compliance requirements in one platform.
Profitability
In pediatric care, ensuring the financial health of your practice is just as important as nurturing the health of your young patients. As your patients grow, so should your practice’s revenue.
By streamlining billing, optimizing revenue cycles, and increasing patient throughput, IMS ensures your practice gets accurate and timely reimbursements, sees more patients in less time, and optimizes revenue streams.
Unlock Your Pediatric Office’s Full Potential with IMS
Does your current EHR system streamline your workflow or complicate it? Does it automate routine tasks? Does it elevate patient engagement and experience?
IMS does all of these and more.
Our award-winning EHR platform simplifies workflows with intuitive interfaces, leverages next-level automation to free up valuable time, and elevates your quality of care with its pediatric-specific features.
With IMS, you can enjoy unparalleled efficiency while ensuring the best possible outcomes for your littlest patients.
