The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues to spread in the United States, upsetting the stock market, causing a sharp drop in air travel, and prompting the declaration of a national emergency.
In response to the spread of coronavirus across the globe, the World Health Organization (WHO) has characterized COVID-19 as a pandemic.
At the epicenter of the battle to contain the coronavirus are medical practices. As you move forward during this pandemic, you’ll need to implement contingency plans to ensure your business continuity.
Beyond maintaining mission-critical functions, your practice should have procedures to help you adapt to office closures, employee absences, and fluctuations in appointment requests.
Take action by implementing these six digital health solutions:
- Connect with patients through patient engagement tools.
As the outbreak continues, you can leverage patient messaging to answer questions, provide resources, and engage with patients outside the office.
Here’s a list of patient messaging features to use:
- Population broadcasting: Easily reach your patients with updates on the coronavirus and office closures.
- Appointment reminders: Help patients remember to keep their appointments and ensure your schedule maximizes your time.
- Recalls: Use this feature to remind patients to come back for follow-up appointments.
To prepare for an increase in appointment requests, you’ll want a patient messaging tool that gives you an easy-to-navigate view of all requests, real-time availability for each provider, and the option to limit availability to ensure schedules don’t get overbooked.
- Implement telehealth solutions to decrease the number of office visits.
Delivering quality care doesn’t always require an in-person visit. Telemedicine allows providers to virtually connect with patients through a secure, HIPAA-compliant channel.
During a pandemic, practices can use telehealth appointments to reduce the risk of the illness spreading. Additionally, telehealth can help patients access care in the event of public transportation or office closures.
Interested in offering telehealth to your patients? Consider a Greenway Marketplace Partner for video visits that integrate with your Greenway EHR.
- Partner with a medical billing service to prepare for increased staff absences.
How would your practice function if billing staff couldn’t report to work?
You want to encourage employees to stay home when they feel unwell. But you know that the absence of one or two members of your billing team could cause delays in getting reimbursements and put your practice at risk.
To keep your finances secure even during a pandemic, rely on a billing service — that doesn’t take sick days — to take care of collections. When you partner with Greenway Revenue Services, you can focus on what’s best for your employees, patients, and practice.
- Use chronic care management programs to determine coronavirus vulnerability.
A chronic care management service gives you an easy way to monitor patients with multiple pre-existing conditions who may be more vulnerable in the event of a coronavirus diagnosis.
- Ensure your EHR system facilitates health data exchange.
CommonWell Health Alliance makes interoperability a reality for providers by allowing secure access to patient data from disparate systems.
Through its integration with Intergy EHR and Prime Suite, CommonWell enables practices to exchange health data with other participating practices.
If patients are enrolled in CommonWell, providers can see if they recently moved from an area with many confirmed coronavirus cases. With this more holistic view of their patients’ health, they can then determine the best treatment plan.
- Choose a hosted EHR to safeguard patient records.
You never want to lose sight of patient data security. But amid a pandemic or other emergency, you don’t want to take time away from caring for patients to worry about your security risk.
That’s why we recommend a hosted EHR that keeps your practice data on the cloud. You’ll have the freedom to focus on your patients, knowing that patient data is protected by anti-virus software and 24/7 real-time monitoring. Plus, you’ll have the added benefit of records available anytime, anywhere if your staff need to work from home.
While you’re implementing your coronavirus contingency plans, know you have a trusted adviser to help if you need it.
If you identify a need at your practice, give us a call. We can discuss how our EHR, patient engagement, Marketplace, and revenue cycle solutions can position your practice for success.
How prepared is your practice?
Take Greenway’s preparedness assessment to find out if your practice is prepared to meet the challenges we face today.
