Healthcare quality today is best improved using standardized metrics powered by digital solutions. Coordinating seamless care across networks and unifying all practice departments with modern solutions improves inefficient tasks, lowers patient and practice costs, and encourages proactive patient engagement.
What is Quality of Care?
There are many moving parts to practice management that affect healthcare quality of care. Every individual and practitioner experiences care differently. Therefore, strategies aimed at improving healthcare should incorporate proven core principles. In conjunction with the World Health Organization (WHO), the National Academy of Medicine developed a study to identify the markers of high-quality patient care.
The study found that quality healthcare needs to be integrated, people-centric, efficient, timely, and equitable. Providing a patient with high-quality care should never cause harm, exacerbate an illness, or place the patient in an unsafe or precarious position. Healthcare decisions should be evidence-based and tailored to the patient’s needs while avoiding treatments that are of no benefit. Every stage of a person’s life requires modification for optimal healthcare.
Providers must pay attention to an individual’s changing lifestyle as they age. Cultural preferences and home life situations change with every season of life. High-quality health care is equitable to all people regardless of their religion, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or gender. To achieve high-quality care, practices should mitigate wasting resources. This includes time, money, and the energy of both patient and staff alike. A patient’s care should be consistent in quality across all healthcare networks and provide patients with the maximum access to all beneficial services. Telehealth operations are beneficial to that end when applicable.
Improving Patient Interactions
It is easy for patients to become overwhelmed by the amount of available health information, this especially holds true as we age or when we are managing a new illness. For some patients the complexity of navigating a digital healthcare system seems impossible. Practices should understand that if they make the time to educate patients on their conditions, quality of care improves.
Provide your clients with reliable, medically sound resources, and continue to teach them how easy it is to reach out digitally to their provider and ask a question or see a test result after they leave their physician’s office. Costs are lowered, and patients fare better overall. An educated, engaged patient who takes an active role in their health generally sees an improved or stabilized outcome. Patient portals, email correspondence, newsletters, and texts that provide accurate health education all help patients learn when they should seek care for a new symptom or check in on an old one.
Encouragement that incentivizes patients to create positive health habits and take agency in their screenings and regular care results in lower healthcare costs. Effective self-advocacy and higher patient satisfaction are often the result. Although development of a healthcare educational program may cost time and an up-front investment in work, the patients who learn to partner with their doctor to take charge of their regular healthcare will ultimately reduce administrative costs and resource use. Patient portals can provide access to patients and their caretakers with important educational materials to better manage their health. Prescription refills and appointment scheduling can be completed quickly with no hold time necessary.
Test results are available online along with instructions for the next steps. Compliant patients reduce practice workload and keep patients healthier between appointments. A patient who can successfully advocate for their own medical needs and confidently navigate the digital healthcare landscape is a powerful way to improve the quality of healthcare.
Physicians are aware of the relationship between improved patient outcomes and reduced healthcare costs. The direct consequence of the patient who stays on track with their care plan is less costly medical care. Non-compliant and disengaged patients experience more frequent acute care visits, hospitalizations, and an escalated need for additional drug therapies or interventional procedures. The first step in getting patients on the path to better health is to show each individual where they need to improve.
For example, reminding patients that it is time to schedule a mammogram, or a colonoscopy may not seem important, but this degree of patient interaction and personalization becomes automatic for both the patient and the practice when using the right digital solutions. In the past, a rushed annual visit in a traditional office setting may have been the only opportunity to educate and intervene. Digital platforms keep healthcare on the minds of your patients and can act as a resource that watches those who stray from the appropriate clinical path. Moreover, these tools will show patients innovative ways to get the support they need to get back on track.
The Right Digital Solutions
Improving quality of care with software solutions includes choosing a partner with proven, reliable, electronic health records (EHRs), easy-to-use patient portals, robust telehealth platforms, remote patient monitoring (RPM), effective revenue cycle management (RCM), clinical decision support, and mobile health applications that work seamlessly together are key. The right solution updates patient information to enable better communication between providers and patients and supports evidence-based decision making. Improving inefficiencies and quality of care begins with team effort, and positive administrative solutions.
Patients are becoming accustomed to digital solutions. Practices that lack the latest digital tools, or those with ineffective frustrating applications, are now seen as old-fashioned healthcare. With no telehealth options or a vibrant patient portal, these practices are limited to periodic, in-person interaction with the patient. Digital platforms provide anywhere access with increased availability to the practice. While the digital healthcare space will continue to change and benefit from advancements, the current availability of digital solutions and the resources available to connect with patients should be recognized as a unique opportunity to improve all dimensions of healthcare quality starting today.
At Virtual OfficeWare Healthcare Solutions (VOW), we provide effective digital office management systems for any practice. We use experience and excellence to design a digital platform along with a customer care team to deliver a clinically focused, personalized experience that suits your needs and helps foster growth and quality of care.
The narrative surrounding digital health is often focused on technology when it should be focused on delivering quality healthcare. As the capabilities of digital platforms continue to expand, there is reason to be optimistic that healthcare quality will also improve. While technology is an incredible vehicle for practice health, high quality patient healthcare is the destination.
Elevate Your Practice’s Care
VOW partnered with AdvancedMD and CureMD, who understand executes quality healthcare. With a nationwide presence and deep experience across diverse care settings—from primary care offices to specialty centers and rural practices—we are a leading provider of innovative, full-service healthcare solutions. We help healthcare providers improve workflow throughout their practice. It starts with understanding your current processes. By offering all-in-one solutions, we aim to create a smoother experience for both patients and providers.
Our systems integration team works to reduce risk, prevent office disruptions, and ensure fast, efficient deployment. Ongoing training and support are always available to keep your team confident and equipped. From top-tier EHR to complete office management, we’re here to help you improve patient care and boost your practice’s quality and profitability. Contact us to briefly speak with one of our experts or schedule a no-cost no obligation demo.
