Plastic surgery EHR can help you manage your practice by streamlining administrative tasks. These tasks involve patient charting, photo management, e-prescribing, and more. Here are some tips for managing your plastic surgery practice with EHR:
Choose the Right EHR System
Invest in a plastic surgery EHR system built specifically for plastic surgeons. These specialized systems may have features that allow you to add patients’ before-and-after pictures to their charts. Specialized features like this can make it easier for plastic surgeons to track patients’ progress. Consider a system’s usability when looking for an EHR system, as this can impact your practice’s efficiency. Choose a user-friendly system to save time on staff training and orientation. An easy-to-use system can help you focus more on patient care by reducing the time you’d typically spend navigating physical patient records.
Take the time to assess a system’s customer IT support, as their response time can determine your practice’s downtime if you encounter technical problems. You can determine a vendor’s responsiveness by observing how fast they answer your questions and concerns after giving you a demo of their system. The right vendor will get back to you quickly.
Create Customized Templates for Your Practice
Creating templates specific to your practice can reduce the time spent on documentation, allowing you to spend more time with your patients. Customized templates can also promote consistent documentation throughout your practice, as they provide a standardized format to capture patient information and treatments. A typical EHR template for plastic surgery may contain the following sections:
- Patient information: To capture patients’ names, contact information, pre-existing medical conditions, allergies, past plastic surgery information, desired plastic surgery procedure, and the reasons for seeking the procedure.
- Plastic surgeon’s consultation notes: To capture notes from the initial consultation with a patient. It may include the benefits and risks of the potential procedure and information on whether it’s the right option for a patient’s desired outcome.
- Physical examination: To capture your physical examination findings. This section may include a patient’s current photos to act as a baseline for treatment.
- Treatment: To provide a detailed description of the potential procedure. You can document the procedure’s technique, necessary preparation measures, and agreed-upon surgery date.
- Surgery notes: To provide a detailed account of the surgery. This section may include photographs taken during the surgery and details like a patient’s incision site and anesthesia dosage.
- Post-surgery care: To capture your post-op care recommendations and a follow-up appointment schedule.
Creating customized templates is relatively straightforward when you invest in an easy-to-use system. Start by identifying your practice’s common procedures. Then, create templates containing all the information that needs to be documented regarding the procedures. This includes pre-op assessment criteria, potential complications, and post-op care guidelines. Give distinct names to your new templates to make them easy to find.
Invest in EHR Staff Training
Train employees who’ve never used your EHR to verify they know how to use it appropriately. Combine onsite and virtual training to allow your staff to learn your system even when they’re out of the office. EHR vendors often provide educational resources with step-by-step instructions on how to use their systems. Make the resources accessible to your staff. You can also choose a few employees to undergo in-depth training with your EHR software provider if they offer training. These employees can then assist their colleagues if they face issues.
Proper training can increase data entry accuracy. Employees may be less likely to overlook relevant data fields if they know how to navigate your system. The fewer mistakes that are made, the less time you have to spend correcting errors.
Integrate Your EHR Software With Existing Systems
Successful plastic surgery practices often rely on systems like EHR, patient scheduling, and billing software to run effectively. Integrate your EHR software with existing systems for streamlined administrative processes. Integrating your EHR with billing software eliminates the need for manual data entry as relevant patient information, like names, contact details, and insurance information, can be automatically transferred between the two with a click of a button. Eliminating manual data entry can reduce the risk of errors that may cause payment delays.
You can also integrate EHR with your practice’s scheduling system to make it easier for your team to book patient appointments or allow your clients to do so themselves. With an EHR appointment scheduler, you can automatically set appointment reminders, reducing cancellation and no-show rates. Work with your EHR, billing, and scheduling vendors for efficient integration. They can help you align data fields in your EHR to corresponding fields in your billing and scheduling software.
Streamline Your Practice With Plastic Surgery EHR
The right plastic surgery EHR can improve your practice’s efficiency by automating administrative tasks like patient charting and appointment scheduling. It can help you keep detailed records, allowing you to track patients’ progress. Choose a system with specialty-specific features like patient photo management for an easy time documenting pertinent patient information and tracking treatment results.
