Submit Patient Forms

 
Every health care practice has a core of active patients and also many inactive patients who have not made an office visit from one to 10 years. Why not use our service to help reactivate these patients? Assign a staff member to call a few of these “missing” patients each day. Say, “We are updating our medical records and have a new secure and convenient way for you to provide us with this information online. We just need your email address, and we will send you the link.”
Watch our video at http://submitpatientforms.com/quick-tour or call for a free demo of this service. 888-427-1116 [est]. 
 

From time to time, a patient may complete our online forms and forget to submit them or simply partially complete the information and leave them unfinished. Here’s a little tip. Our process has been tested and shown to be compatible with an Apple iPad. So, buy one for your practice. All you need is wireless Internet access, and you can hand your iPad to a patient instead of a clip board with sheets of paper. You still need to send them a link from your management account on our server, but they can start, complete or submit their forms while sitting in your office. And the good news is that all their information will be legible, immediately retrieved by your staff and added to the patients chart. 

Electronic Medical Records [EMR] are basically digitized interactive records that can be stored and viewed on a health care facility’s computer. Many practices now have networked computers or monitors in all treatment rooms, and a patient’s records can be brought up on the screen with the patient in the chair. Notations and charting for each patient can be made electronically and stored digitally.
Electronic Health Records [EHR] take EMR to the next level. This refers to the ability to share the information stored electronically with others. For example, a patient may have a family practitioner who refers them to a specialist for a particular problem, and it would be extremely advantageous for the patient’s records to be reviewed by the specialist; or a patient may show up at the emergency room of a hospital where records are made and the patient’s personal physician wants to see this information. When electronic health records becomes the rule and not the exception [required for all physicians by 2014], a health care practitioner, hospital, nursing home, etc will be able to access electronically, with permission, the patient’s records from another health care facility.
This has tremendous implications for intake forms. Imagine not having to fill out pages of forms every time you visit a new doctor!
 Call us at 888-427-1116 [est] for more information or to see a sample form or demonstration.

 
The traditional paper charting system used by numerous health care facilities is costly and time-consuming – it’s yesterday’s news.
The American Recovery Act of 2009 will require all medical offices to have electronic health records by 2014. What are the benefits of electronic medical records?
“The average dental practice spends upwards of $15,800 on the creation and storage of patients charts each year and spends at least $11,520 annually on 576 hours of labor required to maintain paper records.” Source - Dr.  Larry Emmott. Paper vs. Digital:  What's it Worth to You?  Dental Products Report, 01-JUL-2006.
“One-quarter of all medical spending goes ito administrative and overhead costs, and reliance on antiquated paper-based record and information systems needlessly increases these costs/”
Source - Steffie Woolhandler, Terry Campbell, and David U. Himmelstein (2003) "Costs of Health Care Administration in the United StatesandCanada." New England Journal of Medicine.
EMR will cut down on clerical time and paying staff to retrieve and organize paper charts [25-75 per day]. More patients can be seen in a day without lost chair time due to lost or misplaced records and documents.
EMR will prevent the loss or duplication of medical records.  Look what happed after Katrina in New Orleans – there was widespread loss all of medical records. Had they been in electronic format, they could have been backed up off site, or the doc could have taken the hard drive when they evacuated. What if there is a fire and the paper records are destroyed?
Less space is necessary to archive information in a hard drive than in file cabinets, and it is environmentally sound by eliminating paper and saving trees.
Almost every electronic records software manufacturer says that your office will be paperless and meet the requirements that the government is insisting upon to lower heath care costs and minimize mistakes. However, they suggest that in order to become paperless, the practice must retype all the information provided by the patient on handwritten forms into the EMR or scan all the information. Isn’t there something missing here?
Call us at 888-427-1116 [est] to see how we can help you become truly paperless or to see a demonstration.
 

Currently, many specialists send printed forms, cards or tear-off pads to their referring docs to assist in patient referrals. In turn, the GP or other referring docs will fill out the form with the pertinent information and either give it to the patient to bring with them [along with x-rays] or fax or mail it to the specialist.
Often the patient forgets to bring it with them or brings the paperwork and leaves the x-ray home. Mailing or faxing often slows down the process and adds extra cost.
Check out our amazing new product that solves these problems. It’s an online patient referral form. The specialist emails a link to his/her referring docs. The doc clicks on the link that brings him/her to the form on our secure website. The doc [or staff member] types in the appropriate information and can actually upload x-rays or clinical photos directly into the form.
When completed the referring doc clicks on “submit” and the specialists gets an instant email notification that the information has been uploaded to their account. The specialist logs on to their password protected management account and may view, print or download the text and images to the practice computer. If desired, the two docs may discuss the patient in real time by phone or by email.
Call us at 888-427-1116 [est] for more information or to see a sample form or demonstration.

As I surf the web, I see many professional and esthetic looking medical and dental websites that describe state-of-the-art technologies for patient care, but in my opinion, fall short with the process utilized for patients to fill out and submit their initial paperwork.
The large majority of these sites have simple PDF forms for patients to download, fill out and bring with them to the office.
In general, when you send a patient to your website to fill out forms, it slows down the process for your practice. You are dependent upon the patient waking up one morning and thinking, "Today's the day I am going to find the Dr. Jones, MD website." If they type in the wrong address, they get frustrated and don't proceed, or they call the office and disturb one of your staff.
From a practice management standpoint, these static PDF forms raise many questions.

1. How does your patient know were to access the forms?
2. How do you keep track of whom you have asked to fill out a form?
3. How many patients per week/month forget to bring in their completed form to their first visit?
4. Do your online forms consider HIPAA compliance?
5. Is there some way to remind the patient to complete their forms?
6. Do you get back your forms with sometimes illegible handwriting?
7. How do you enter your patient’s information into your practice management software from these forms?
8. How much staff time is taken up with the management of your forms?

If you don't like the answers or don't know some of the answers, then click on “Quick Tour” on our home page to view a 7 minute video that explains our service and how we deal with answers to the preceding questions or give me a call at 888-427-1116 [est].
Dr. Keith Rossein