Amy Oliver, Marketing Manager
While most of the healthcare community may be aware of the importance of clinician time savings, it often takes a back seat to more concrete cashflow optimization initiatives in today’s revenue-starved milieu.
Patient engagement, patient experience, and RCM solutions related to accuracy and payment velocity attract more attention and investment. Granted, metrics associated with these may appear more tangible than FTE hours or the amount of time clinicians spend top-of-license, but these details are measurable and crucial to your health system’s financial and operational health.
Most of Xealth’s clinical efficiency gains come from digitizing and automating processes that were manual, tedious, and applicable to large population groups. An emerging category is leveraging Xealth’s monitor view to create a single pane of glass where various dashboards and data sets are available to view from within the patient record.
Health systems need to meet requirements to outreach to patients and solicit interest vs. using precious staff time to call patients, hand out flyers, or even mail educational information.
Here’s how Xealth helps health systems save clinician and administrative time.
1: Reduction in Time Spent on Phone Calls and Letters
Digitally engaging surgical patients for pre-anesthesia visit
Time Savings: Nearly one FTE saved per year (2,000 hours)
Preparing a patient for a surgical procedure required a lot of manual work for one health system client of ours, mostly around getting the patient set up to visit the pre-anesthesia clinic.
A lot of time and effort went into running reports, developing manual outreach like letters and phone calls, and getting patients signed up for this program.
Not only did this waste clinical staff time, but it also delayed the surgical procedure due to how long it took to prepare these patients for the pre-anesthesia visit. This was a poor patient experience and the process delayed referral appointments to specialists resulting from the pre-anesthesia visit.
Xealth Contribution: The health system used our digital health platform to connect 100% of qualified patients with educational content about the program. And, it sent a direct link to the patient for online scheduling of their pre-admission surgical screening (PASS) visit.
2: Eliminate Hand-Stuffing Envelopes
Automate Advance Directive communication
Time Savings: Saved staff 8 hours per week
One health system client decided to dedicate specific effort to increase the volume of Advance Directives on file, which is an admirable goal but unfortunately, consumed significant staff time.
Before Xealth, here’s what staff did manually:
- Run reports in the EHR.
- Open each patient’s chart to find their email address and confirm details, including mailing address.
- Manually email patients a message with the class schedule.
- Print and stuff envelopes with additional educational content to mail to the patient.
Xealth Contribution: Using our digital health platform, this health system has now automated the entire process, digitally connecting the patient to the class schedule and presenting the educational information in their patient portal.
3: Improve Third-Party Supplier Mailing Process
ERAS kits delivered automatically before surgery
Time Savings: Resulted in $15 in staff labor savings per surgery
Before surgery, patients receive instructions about preparing for surgery, as well as what to do afterward adhering to the enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) protocols.
Before engaging Xealth, clinical staff provided these materials to a patient in the office, but with increased virtual visits, it took a lot of work to get kits to patients. Clinical staff had to run complex reports in the EHR to capture the shipping address and contact information, and then create a list to send to the kit supplier, Medline, for ordering.
Xealth Contribution: Xealth now provides the digital tools to automate the ERAS kit delivery. Upon receiving the appropriate HL7 message, Xealth captures the patient’s information and transmits the data to Medline for streamlined order placement seven days before the procedure. Updates to Medline based on surgery reschedules are automatically handled with no staff involved, resulting in:
- $15/order in labor savings
- Increased patient readiness
- Reduced same-day cancellations
4: Eliminate Wasting Time Calling Patients Who Aren’t Interested
Automate solicitation of interest for diabetes management courses
Time Savings: Reduced manual outreach from 100% of patients to less than 10%
Diabetes management courses are essential for patients to ensure their condition is well managed, but informing and enrolling patients can be highly manual and time-consuming for clinicians who often have to promote the courses during patient encounters.
While mailing hard copy collateral is an option, this method requires significant labor hours stuffing envelopes in addition to postage costs, which is not a good use of medical staff resources or expenses. This health system client looked to us to change their manual process.
Xealth Contribution: Xealth established a workflow to identify eligible patients for the diabetes course and automatically reaches out to them via email or their patient portal to solicit interest in learning more. When patients answer “yes,” the care management team is notified in their EHR to follow up with patients.
These stories are just a sampling of how we increase clinician time savings. To learn more about how the Xealth digital health platform can reduce the administrative burden on your clinicians and save them valuable time, schedule your one-on-one consultation today!