7 Ways Technology Can Save Healthcare Practitioners Time

It’s no secret that healthcare practitioners are short on time. With staff shortages throughout the healthcare industry, it’s no wonder.

This staff shortage means that those who do work in healthcare need to speed up as many of their processes as possible. While it’s important to keep accurate patient records, for example, it’s much faster to store these in the cloud than to keep them updated by hand or on a hard drive.

The more time healthcare practitioners have, the more time they can spend helping patients to get better.

Here’s some of the ways technology can save healthcare practitioners time.

Automate patient appointment booking

Patient appointment booking is a huge drain on resources.

Healthcare providers that don’t allow patients to book online create more work for administrative staff, who then have less time to spend dealing with patients in-person and creating a welcoming atmosphere to help put patients at ease.

Schedule meetings automatically

When meeting scheduling is automated, staff don’t need to worry about coordinating their schedules. Instead, the meeting organizer can tell the software whom they need in the meeting, and the software can use this information to work out the best time for everyone to meet.

It does this using calendar sync, which factors in attendees’ real-time availability and prevents any double-bookings.

Automate repeat prescriptions

Repeat prescriptions are a time-consuming process for staff and patients.

By allowing patients to order them online, then automatically sending them to the patients’ preferred pharmacy once it’s been approved, it saves patients from needing to visit the doctor’s office in person.

Ordering prescriptions in-person can be awkward and mean patients have to rearrange their schedules to get there. When they can order online and their prescription is sent to their pharmacy automatically, they can order and collect their medication at their own convenience. This creates a better experience for patients and reduces the processing time of repeat prescriptions.

Sync patient notes via the cloud

When a patient moves, it can be weeks or even months before their medical records are relocated to their new doctor. Saving patients’ notes to the cloud means that everything can be sent straight away, preventing the need for an administrator to move everything across manually. Patients can then get the care that they need faster, without the delay that often comes with changing doctors.

Automating the process also means that patients’ notes are less likely to get lost, which is a common problem when patients relocate.

Virtual appointments

When a patient is severely ill or contagious, it’s not recommended that they visit a doctor in person in case they pass their germs on to someone else. However, that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t benefit from some medical advice.

Offering patients virtual appointments is a cheaper alternative to home visits. It means doctors can fit patients in around their other appointments and don’t need to worry about travel time, which can cause missed appointments and doctors needing to work later to fill in the gap.

Bot triage

Chatbots are everywhere, and they’re getting smarter than ever. Chatbots could be used by forward-thinking practices to offer patients a triage service. This then saves receptionists from needing to act as a gatekeeper, giving them more time to spend helping patients who are there in person.

Patients may also feel more comfortable discussing their symptoms with a bot rather than a person, making it easier for the bot to decide whether the patient needs to rest, to see a nurse, or to visit a doctor.

Given how many people each year see a nurse or doctor for ailments that go away on their own, offering a bot triage service is a simple, scalable way to allow patients to get answers about their symptoms without taking up healthcare practitioners’ time.

Should the chatbot decide that the patient needs to see someone, an appointment can be scheduled using the chatbot.

Translation services

When you need medical attention in a foreign country, the language barrier can be a huge issue. New technology cuts out the need for a translator, meaning that hospitals don’t need to hunt around for someone who can translate – they can use their smartphone or tablet instead. This makes the patient more at ease, cuts out the middle person (who then has more time to do whatever they were doing to begin with), and allows hospitals to treat them faster.

Conclusion

Technology helps doctor’s offices and hospitals to speed up basic, time-consuming processes. This then gives healthcare practitioners more time to spend with patients, putting them at ease and helping them to get the care that they need.