The healthcare industry has faced multiple challenges in recent years. People in the United States are paying more for healthcare without seeing an uptick in quality. The industry is also experiencing a shortage of skilled workers combined with an aging population, which is putting more demand on the system. Process improvements in healthcare can help professionals navigate these challenges and improve patient outcomes.
In long-term, post-acute care, implementing a quality improvement process can help you navigate challenges specific to your field. Read on to learn more about process improvements in healthcare that can help you close rounding gaps, adjust to changing payment models (such as MIPS), and make the billing process more efficient.
What Process Improvement in Healthcare Actually Means
Though MBA students and other business leaders spend a lot of time researching and implementing process improvements, physicians don't tend to be part of the process. Unless you’ve spent some time in administration, you may not be familiar with the most common methods for process improvement, such as:
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Lean: A focus on eliminating waste in organizational processes so you can focus on customer care
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Six Sigma: A data-driven system that measures and optimizes business processes
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Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA): A four-step approach for improving processes by learning from your daily routines and refining processes to make them better.
In healthcare, process improvements involve looking at strategies to improve patient care while lowering costs. Implementing care quality changes also reduces readmissions, which in turn further reduces costs.
The main strategies for performance improvement in healthcare include:
- Streamlining workflows to reduce waste and redundancy. This just means you’re using technology and other tools to spend less time on your standard processes. For example, instead of asking your patients the same questions at the start of each visit, you use an EHR or another documentation tool to learn how other caregivers have treated the patient since your last visit.
- Closely assessing daily procedures to identify unnecessary repetition. For example, by integrating your admissions logs, patient files, and invoicing tools, you can limit the number of times you have to enter redundant patient data after each visit.
Process improvements give you more time to interact with patients. They also improve patient care and safety and align your operations with better patient outcomes and increased revenue.
Applying Process Improvement to Rounding in SNFs
Implementing process improvements across a whole facility is time-consuming. As a provider, it’s also not your responsibility. But you can apply process improvement techniques to close gaps in your role and offer better care to your patients. In long-term, post-acute care, rounding is decentralized, which enables you to make immediate decisions, but often creates service gaps.
There is a lack of standardization, meaning you and other caregivers don’t always take notes the same way or enter the same information. You may also deal with lost notes and other data gaps that impact treatment and billing. Without thorough information, your billing team might enter the wrong codes or miss billing for a service altogether. Process improvement helps you fix these common workflow problems.
Too Many Clicks
When you’re working with multiple software platforms, you have to click excessively to process paperwork and even make an order. You may even have to click multiple times just to complete an order in your EHR. A task as simple as ordering medication often involves complex menus and screens to navigate. You spend time entering patient data in multiple locations and navigating endless drop-down menus.
No Mobile Access
Mobile access is a must to improve workflows. You need an app you can easily carry with you as you make your rounds instead of carrying a laptop or taking notes on paper and transcribing them later.
Lack of Real-Time Updates
Communication between caregivers is crucial in long-term, post-acute care. When everyone has access to updates in real time, you reduce the risk of medication errors and care delays that can impact your patients.
The Billing Bottleneck: Fixing Inefficiencies That Cost You
Inefficient processes and procedures cost you time and money. Missing notes and documents keep you from being able to bill for your services, because you don’t have evidence to back up your billing codes. Poor documentation can also cause your billing team to enter the wrong codes or capture incorrect charges which leads to claim denials and lost revenue.
In SNF and LTPAC facilities, missing documents can lead to payment delays or denials. You have to navigate complicated billing models with strict documentation requirements. Using technology to eliminate these bottlenecks keep you in compliance and help you collect payments faster.
Identify your own bottlenecks by measuring days sales outstanding (how long it takes to collect payment), denial rates, and underbilling frequency.
Tools for Quality and Process Improvements in Healthcare
The right EHR can solve multiple process improvement goals at once. Choose an EHR, such as ChartPath, that is built for rounding. You get real-time documentation so you spend less time chasing paperwork and experience fewer payment delays. Your patients also get timely care.
Our EHR also connects with billing and payment systems. You can automate billing, capture charges based on EHR data, validate claims, and receive prompts when you’re not in compliance.
Role-based task flows keep you from having to duplicate information, and dashboarding and analytics offer timely feedback for data-driven care plans and operational strategies.
Case in Point: What Better Looks Like
ChartPath has worked with multiple providers like you to improve efficiency and revenue with one solution. One client used our revenue cycle management solutions, and their denial rate dropped by 25% in 90 days. Imagine what you could do with that extra time and revenue.
Getting Started With ChartPath: Build Your Healthcare Process Improvement Plan
Make your practice more efficient by using a PDSA or Lean model. Start by collecting data that showcases your areas of improvement. This includes billing metrics, such as DSO and claim denials, along with patient satisfaction scores, patient wait times, employee satisfaction, and average length of stay.
Once you’ve identified your own bottlenecks and redundancies, look for technology, such as ChartPath’s EHR, to address them. ChartPath offers AI-powered EHR, an automations marketplace, and other process improvement tools in healthcare.
Because our systems interact, you get a whole-facility solution in one easy package, fixing your most pressing challenges in a sustainable, long-term way.
Start improving your processes today. Contact us.
