7 Essential Hospital Workflow Improvements for Better Patient Care (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Could your hospital workflows use a checkup? The last few years have really put hospitals under enormous strain. One reason in particular being the coronavirus. Dealing with the patient influx brought on by COVID-19 really highlighted hospital workflows that just weren't working. If your hospital is struggling with inefficient workflows, it might be time to invest some time and energy into updating those systems. I'm Raeed, and in today's video, we'll look into seven hospital workflows that you can improve and how to do it. Let's go. When it comes to patient intake, there are plenty of forms to fill out. It's important to gather updated health data and insurance information as soon as possible. Not doing so can slow down the admission process and cause frustration for patients and hospital workers alike. If you want to expedite the patient intake process, switch to online forms. This way, patients can fill these out in advance and automatically create or update records in your system. Make sure your online forms are HIPAA compliant. Keeping your patient data secure helps prevent legal problems and builds a great reputation among your patients. After receiving medical care, patients begin their discharge process. During this time, you want to make things as smooth as possible. Instead, this process is often confusing and complicated between care instructions and scheduling follow-up appointments. To make things easier, help patients prepare for discharge as soon as they're admitted. Inform the patients about what type of care they'll likely need after discharge. This allows them ample time to start checking their insurance coverage and other necessary tasks. You can also start scheduling follow-up appointments with their physician or a specialist. Sometimes patients have to transfer to another hospital or institution to receive the appropriate care. This can be time-consuming and often slow down the patient care process. To expedite the transfer process, automate the system between your facility and other healthcare facilities. Doing so will ensure the other facilities have the important info they need as quickly and as easy as possible. Your hospital's pharmacy can likely use some updating. These regulated and often time-consuming processes are prone to stalling between patients waiting for pharmacists to fill orders, double-checking prescription info, and processing patients' medical forms. To improve your pharmacy workflow, try using a single electronic form to gather patient data. Rather than requiring patients to fill out multiple paper forms, keep everything in one digital place. Not to mention, online forms can help pharmacists collect patient consent and medical history quickly. Medication processing can be an error-prone task. According to the Federal Drug Administration, around 100,000 reports of suspected medical errors occur in the U.S. each year. So boosting your medical processes efficiency prevents some serious errors from occurring. Here are a couple of ways to speed up your process without sacrificing accuracy. One, physically separate any medications that sound or look similar. Two, limit the different medication strengths you have on hand. This way, pharmacists save time and can also avoid giving patients the wrong strength prescription by accident. With quality healthcare comes efficient medical documentation. Try using an electronic health record, or EHR, system to speed up documentation. Not only does this give your staff easier access to a patient's medical history, but it also frees up time and attention that providers could have been using to interact with patients. Investing in tablets and other mobile devices for your staff gives them all the info they need right at their fingertips, wherever they are in the hospital. The last place you want a slow and inefficient workflow is the emergency room. Being able to immediately determine the type of care necessary and connect them to the correct provider is crucial. Using business process management software will streamline ER operations and reduce patient wait times, a win-win for everyone. Additionally, electronic monitors can alert staff when an exam room or provider is free, so they can take in more patients. Now that all your processes and paperwork are digitally streamlined, you need to make sure they're also HIPAA compliant. This is where JotForm comes in. JotForm has HIPAA-compliant forms ready to use. These online forms will help you securely collect and send patient info. Safe, quick, and simple medical forms are an important and necessary part of streamlining your hospital workflows. With so many people needing healthcare these days, your hospital will benefit from having efficient workflows. Let's review some areas you can update to get things organized. Here are seven areas you can update. Patient intake and discharge, patient transfers, hospital pharmacies, medication processing, medical documentation, and emergency room care. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, I'm Raeed, and make sure to subscribe to our channel if you want to stay in the loop with all the things JotForm.