5 Reasons Your Clinic needs to Switch to Digital Charting (and How to Do It)
You're still using paper charts? Seriously? Time to wake up and smell the digital coffee. Yes, change is hard, but so is unnecessarily charting for 8+ hours every week.
Allow us to clue you in on a little secret: Digital charting is completely going to change the way you do things around the clinic.
We’ll cover:
What is digital charting?
The top 5 benefits of digital charting for clinics
How does digital charting work?
Digital charting solutions
How to get digital charting right
Time to get started!
What is digital charting?
Digital charting refers to the use of electronic systems and software for recording, storing, and managing patients' medical records and health information.
This electronic approach to charting is part of a broader category of health information technology known as Electronic Health Records (EHRs) or Electronic Medical Records (EMRs).
Patients’ medical records are stored electronically, so their info is at your fingertips whenever you need it. No more flipping through pages to find their history or hunting down misfiled papers. Everything lives in one place, neatly organized and searchable.
There’s less clutter and chaos. No towering stacks of paper charts dominating your office space; an EHR declutters your practice and streamlines your workflow. You’ll save time not having to track down charts or decipher illegible handwriting.
Speaking of saving time, digital charting means you can stop repeating yourself from documenting the same info in different places. Enter it once, and it's recorded. With a few clicks, you can pull up patients’ full medical histories, review past visits, and make better-informed diagnoses and treatment plans.
The top 5 reasons digital charting for clinics is a great idea
Here are a few reasons you'll be glad you made the switch:
Less paperwork, more patient care. It’s all in one place. With digital charting, you can quickly pull up patients’ medical history, allergies, medications, and visit notes.
Think of all the time you'll save not chasing down missing charts or deciphering illegible handwriting. More time with your patients and less with the paperwork – if it sounds like a win-win, it’s because it is.
Access records from anywhere. As long as you have an internet connection, you can access patient records whether you're at your clinic, the hospital, or even on vacation. Time to forget those frantic calls to the office to track down critical patient information in an emergency.
Digital records are available 24/7 from any device.
Improved accuracy. Let's face it, paper records are prone to errors and information frequently gets lost or misfiled. EMRs minimize mistakes by standardizing data entry and allowing information to be shared accurately between providers.
Digital charting also makes records legible and helps avoid confusion from ambiguous abbreviations or horrible, horrible handwriting.
Much better security. How secure are those paper files sitting in your storage room? With EMRs, patient data is encrypted and access is strictly controlled. Audit trails log anyone accessing records so you know who viewed what and when. Say bye-bye to the risk of lost or stolen files compromising patient privacy.
If all that doesn’t convince you, think cost savings. According to estimates, a paper-based practice can spend $1,500-$2,500 per clinician each year on paper and ink. Yikes! An EHR slashes those costs and can increase your revenue through improved billing and coding.
Plus, there are also the costs of clinical documentation assistants, which sometimes total over $60k a year, so we’re talking big bucks.
How does digital charting work?
So how does this whole digital charting thing actually work?
Instead of scribbling notes that only you can decipher, you’ll type them into an app that organizes everything for you.
Digital charting basically means you’re keeping all your patient records electronically using specialized software. Everything is stored in a central database that you can access from any device.
Most systems allow you to do everything from scheduling appointments to e-prescribing medications to securely messaging patients
.
When a patient comes in, you just pull up their complete health history with the click of a button.
You can even set up alerts to notify you if there are any critical values you need to address ASAP.
How digital charting improves patient care
This will help you, yes, but have you wondered about how it can actually help your patients? As it turns out, going fully digital also comes with some major benefits for patient care.
Let’s check them out:
Complete, accurate info. With digital charting, all of a patient’s health info is centralized in the cloud. Doctors and staff have a full, accurate picture of the patient’s medical history right at their fingertips. This means you can make better clinical decisions and catch important details you might otherwise miss.
Fewer mistakes. Have you ever had a patient end up with the wrong meds or treatment because someone couldn’t read the doctor’s handwriting? Everyone’s been there, both doctors and patients. Digital charting nixes issues like illegible handwriting and incomplete information, reducing mistakes and ensuring patients get the right care.
Better coordination. Sharing patient info between doctors, specialists, hospitals and other organizations is a breeze with digital records. Different providers can easily access the same up-to-date patient charts, enabling a well-coordinated care team. Patients spend less time repeating their medical history and have fewer gaps in treatment.
Digital charting solutions
Now that we’ve got your attention, we’d like to introduceLindy, your AI-powered EHR companion.
Here’s how Lindy can help you reap the benefits of bringing your clinic into 2024:
Rapid-fire transcription: Lindy's got ears for the complex lingo of healthcare. Just talk, and watch your words morph into digital notes with impressive speed and accuracy.
Seamless EHR integration: Hit that button, and boom—your notes land in the EHR, no delays, no do-overs. Lindy smartly syncs up with your EHR, pulling in data without you lifting a finger.
In-the-moment charting help: Lindy's not just listening; it's thinking along, offering text suggestions based on what you say and what's already in the patient's record. It's like having a helpful whisper in your ear, which you can heed, tweak, or ignore.
Personalized learning curve: Stick with Lindy, and it'll get you—catching on to your speech quirks, your go-to abbreviations, and those terms only you use. It's all about custom fitting its smarts to your style.
Smart task tracking: Forget about post-it reminders. Lindy keeps tabs on follow-ups, tests, referrals, and appointments, nudging you and your team based on the juicy details in your notes.
Privacy? Locked down: HIPAA and PIPEDA compliance are a given with Lindy, ensuring your patient info stays secure and confidential.
Win back your day: Imagine cutting note-taking time by 80%, reclaiming up to two whole hours each day. That's the Lindy effect.
No-cost test drive: Skeptical? Take Lindy for a spin on the house and see why clinics everywhere are making the switch.
Following these best practices will help ensure a smooth transition and allow you to bring modernization into your clinical practice.
Start in bite-sized pieces: Don't overhaul your note process overnight. Pick a couple of areas to digitize first, like initial patient notes or billing codes. Ease into the tech, and scale up as you get comfy.
Trust, but verify: Got your notes digitized? Great, but give them a once-over before making it official. Even the slickest AI needs a bit to get "you." Plus, nobody's immune to the occasional garble or glitch.
Detail dive before you dive in: Before those notes hit the EHR, comb through them. Ensure every detail is captured just as you meant. Only then, give your digital seal of approval.
Embrace the cloud, but keep a lifeline: Moving your data to the cloud is like giving your clinic wings—just make sure you have a parachute. Have backups and a solid recovery plan. This way, if the internet's down, your clinic isn't.
Make training a team sport: Digital tools only shine when everyone's on board. Set up training sessions that are fun and interactive. Make sure everyone from the front desk to the back office knows their way around the new system.
Feedback is your friend: Once you're up and running, keep the lines of communication open. Encourage your team to share their experiences—the good, the bad, and the glitchy. Use this feedback to tweak your system, making it into a digital teammate rather than a digital tool.
Summing up
That’s the short and the long of it: It’s clear as a bell that switching your clinic to fancy-schmancy electronic records is where it's at.
Sure, it might take some extra elbow grease to learn the ropes, but once you've gone digital, you'll be livin' the high life. No more squinting at chicken scratch or digging for a misplaced chart.
With just a few clicks, you'll have a patient's full history at your fingertips. So do your clinic a solid, slap a smile on those overworked nurses' faces, and make the leap.
At $99, Lindy is an all-in-one low-cost, high-tech solution to your clinical charting and AI digital assistant needs.
