Did you know that one in three people in the US suffer from orthopedic diseases? In fact, musculoskeletal conditions are one of the most prevalent disorders, affecting 1.71 billion individuals worldwide. Specifically, in the US, they affect almost 127.4 million individuals’ quality of life.
So, what exactly is a musculoskeletal disorder? It is a condition that usually causes lower back pain, neck discomfort, fractures, other injuries, osteoarthritis, and rheumatoid arthritis. This disease requires substantial treatment and vigilant attention from doctors.
However, how can orthopedics satisfy their patients when they are constantly busy with administrative duties (such as processing medical bills and codes)?
This blog will explore how practices can improve their patients’ experience.
Table of Contents
Challenges Faced by Orthopedic Practices
If you run a healthcare practice, you may encounter several difficulties. However, the most frequent issues you will face are revenue cycle management and administrative duties.
These challenges further include:
Administrative Burden
Why do you think administrative work is a challenge for healthcare providers? It is a leading cause of physician burnout and workload in orthopedic physicians.
In administrative work, practitioners must perform activities such as manually documenting patient visits and treatment plans, obtaining prior authorizations, and staying up to date with the ever-changing criteria for billing and coding.
These tasks take up a large portion of the working day, which limits the time available for patient care, even though they are necessary for healthcare facilities to function.
Data Collection
What happens if an orthopedic physician receives an inaccurate or incomplete patient history? Unsatisfactory treatment, of course, with inaccurate diagnoses, inappropriate treatments, and patients’ worsening health conditions resulting from poor data quality.
Hence, collecting and managing quality patient data is vital for many healthcare practices. Nonetheless, it is time-consuming and may impact your orthopedic care.
Revenue Cycle Management
In the cutthroat, competitive healthcare industry, revenue cycle management is crucial yet challenging for healthcare practices. The revenue cycle is not limited to managing cash flow only. On the contrary, the procedure entails assessing, scheduling patients, and filing claims.
What exactly is the challenge? Claim denials are a significant challenge that most healthcare providers deal with. They disrupt the process due to incorrect coding or missing documents. The practitioner has to restart the whole process step by step, which consumes a lot of time and leads to treatment delays for patients.
Strategies to Overcome These Challenges
As we have discussed above, orthopedic service providers face a few main challenges that adversely impact the practice and patients. Here are a few patient-centric strategies that may help you manage your practice’s operations:
Check-In Software
As we have discussed, the manual documentation of patient records adds to the load. Healthcare practices can resolve this issue by implementing digital check-in software that helps them with appointment scheduling, automated reminders, patient registration, and medication refill requests. This paperless digital check-in software can significantly reduce provider data entry and front desk reception duties.
This approach can serve your patients because they can fill out the necessary information at their own pace from home rather than needing to come extra early to fill out mountains of paperwork.
Appointment Scheduling
The best method to increase orthopedic clinics’ efficiency and decrease their burden while also improving patient satisfaction is to use automated appointment scheduling. It refers to web-based, desktop, or mobile solutions that help organizations handle appointments more effectively.
Furthermore, online appointment software enhances the revenue cycle because it sends automated reminders and confirmations to patients, which can reduce no-shows and late cancellations. Additionally, the convenience of online booking may attract new patients who prefer digital interactions over traditional phone calls.
Educating Your Patients
There are physical and mental strains that patients face after undergoing orthopedic surgery. In this situation, to help your patients, it’s critical to inform them about their surgery, the recovery process, and how they will be able to function again.
Orthopedic surgeons can educate their patients and walk them through each step of the surgical process. They can provide educational materials between clinic appointments to enable patients to actively participate in their care. It raises the possibility of a positive outcome.
Following this education, patients are more likely to experience positive results if they comprehend their post-care instructions and know how to follow the provider’s instructions.
Open Communication
How can you relate to and comprehend your patients more deeply if you do not have an open relationship with them?
Maintaining open and regular contact with orthopedic patients can enhance engagement and strengthen provider-patient connections. Orthopedic patients must understand their diagnosis, treatment strategy, and anticipated results. Explain the treatment in simple words without any medical jargon so that patients can understand the expected results and feel more at ease.
Furthermore, your practice must understand your patients’ desired way of communication. For instance, some patients prefer communication over calls, whereas some favor emails. You may improve patient satisfaction by learning which channels your patients choose and using technology to automate messages based on those preferences.
Orthopedic Billing Services
The primary duty of orthopedic surgeons is to look after and treat their patients. The problem arises when other duties, such as medical billing, take up their attention and time. It entails handling patient questions regarding invoices, confirming insurance, and investigating delinquent claims. Both patient care and the orthopedic practice’s effectiveness may suffer as a result of these time-consuming tasks.
This is when practices must realize the importance of professional orthopedic billing services. These services can guarantee compliance, expedite your billing procedure, and eventually boost the financial success of your practice.
Conclusion
At this point, we are aware of the importance of orthopedic care and a positive patient experience. The win-win solution for orthopedic care practices is to explore third-party medical billing companies for outsourcing.
Practices can reduce a chunk of administrative workload, including manual record keeping, appointment scheduling, claim filing, and handling claim denials, by outsourcing orthopedic billing.
As an orthopedic doctor, medical billing is not your specialty. Therefore, outsourcing to a third party will enable you to concentrate on improving patient care while experts take care of the financial matters.
