Quick Tip: Go Digital

Dr. T  0:00  
Owners of a direct care practice are more likely to experience higher job satisfaction than the insurance based practice. And it's no wonder why direct care is independent of insurance. Patients pay the doctor directly for their expertise, the doctor gets full autonomy in how they care for patients and how they get paid. They have chosen this path with a love of medicine. This is the direct care way. 

Dr. T  0:24  
By listening to this podcast, you may even start to believe that you too can have a successful direct care practice. Come listen with an open mind as I share my personal journey and how I pivoted from an insurance based practice to direct care right in the middle of the pandemic. And the valuable lessons along the way. This podcast may be the very thing you need to revitalize your medical practice. I'm your host, owner of a direct care podiatry practice, Dr. Tea Nguyen.

Dr. T  0:52  
Welcome to Quick Tips with Dr. T. This is intended to be five minutes or less, you know, saw holiday season. So I know everyone's got a whole bunch of things going on. And I wanted to make this shorty so that you can walk away with something really useful, something practical for your practice. Here's one thing that really improved my efficiency for my practice. So today's tip is going to be considered going digital with your paperwork. I first learned about digital paperwork when I went to my dentist, and then my chiropractor was doing it and then the acupuncture was doing it. And so all of these medical services are doing all of their intakes online, where I would just have to pull up the link on my phone, I would complete it out. And it goes directly into my chart, it was so seamless, I felt kind of silly not knowing about it sooner. 

Dr. T  1:43  
So that's what I'm sharing with you. So now in my direct care practice, I'm about 90% paperless. So imagine all of the expenses that go into printing out paper registration forms, from the paper reams, the time it takes for your staff to scan and file it into their respective charts. And sometimes mistakes can happen. And then you have to undo some of that work. And it just kind of got to be a big mess, right ink cartridges were really expensive. And then you have to deal with the storage space for the paper or even the shredding services. So if I go in digital, you can get rid of all of those resources, and focus on improving your patient care instead. Here's something that happened in my practice. When I first opened, I had paper registration forms. And my staff was printing out these forms single sided. And I asked her why not print double sided, she could say, well, the patient would never see the backside of the page. And so the front side was all that she was printing. So I immediately put a stop to that and said you need to print double side. So then she printed double sided. And of course, people would miss that backside. And so she went and grabbed a highlighter and started highlighting every single area that needed to be filled out, which was basically the entire packet. So she was going through this incredibly tedious process. And I'm like No wonder she hated her job. She was doing these like remedial work that was not necessary. 

Dr. T  3:10  
So by going digital, I got to cut out all of that confusion, all of that mess, like physical clutter, and it's just seamless. Now it's almost a no brainer for me to go digital. Now there are patients who don't have email are not tech savvy, or they just want to have paper. And especially in areas where you have unreliable Wi Fi, then yes, having paper makes sense. So I still have that option available. I have a small printer, I rarely have to print anything anymore. Everything is digital through my EMR. My EMR that I'm currently using is simple practice. I like this EMR because it's very simple to create a note and you can create templates. But I love it because it allows patients to self register, so they can request an appointment. And then automatically they'll receive the paperwork to complete before their appointment. And they can also put their credit card on file securely, so that no payments get missed or gets delayed. And I want to be clear with you that I am not sponsored by simple practice. I'm simply using it for my practice at the moment. But I am always looking for ways to improve efficiency. So I had moved from a previous platform on to this one. And it seems to be working just fine for my direct care practice. So I invite you to browse around and see if that is going to work for you. 

Dr. T  4:24  
Other systems that I have used in the past was Practice Fusion. I'm not sure what the integration is like I know all these software's tend to evolve with time. So maybe they have something that is more seamless. But back then I had to use a separate software called job forms that would allow patients to complete forms on an iPad or from home digitally, and then it would go through the staff who then had to upload it into the patient's chart. So that was just an extra step that I wanted to eliminate. And so I'm really happy with what I have here. So I hope that this was helpful in getting you on your way to improving your office efficiency. So you can focus on the best part of the practice which is doctoring, I hope you have a safe holiday. And I'll check back with you next week. Take care. 

Dr. T  5:06  
Thank you so much for being here with me. If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, please like, share and subscribe so more people like you can have access to another way of practicing medicine, that direct care way. Let's connect find my info in the show notes and send me your questions. That might be the topic for future episodes. 

Dr. T  5:25  
And lastly, if you remember nothing else, remember this be the energy you want to attract. See you next time.