Blog Level Up Your Clinic Management (2/3): Simplify Work for Your Doctors

Previously, you learnt how to run an automated front desk using Plato. In part two of this blog series, find out how to simplify work for your doctors using Plato’s integrated EMR. Let your doctors decide how they want to work and give them everything they need in one place. Reduce their workloads by helping their patients take control of their care through shared notes, so patients understand their conditions and care plans.   

4) Help your Doctors Choose How They Want to Work

As a clinic manager, one of your goals could be keeping your doctors satisfied by providing them with the right tools to work the way they prefer. A study by Haas et al. (2000) found that when doctors were satisfied at work, their patients also tended to be more satisfied with their healthcare. When doctors are able to take notes their way, they are not only more productive and satisfied, but also have time and energy to focus on a higher volume or value of patients (B. Anderson, 2014). But how would you know what are the right tools for the job? Start by discussing with your doctors about how they notetake. Invite them to walk you through their note taking process. Ask them to share with you the areas they want improved or how they’d prefer to record data. For instance, you might discover that your doctors prefer to annotate images on an iPad for surgical procedures. When you understand your doctors’ note taking preferences, it becomes easier for you to find the right tools to simplify their work.

Plato understands that every doctor works a bit differently. Plato’s flexible EMR gives doctors the freedom to choose how they want to work — whether your doctor prefers to type, write, draw, or dictate their notes, Plato has what they need. Plato’s automations are also well thought through to cater to the needs of different specialties. For example, imagine you run a GP clinic that involves a high volume of patients and a large amount of repetitive data. Plato’s templates, forms, and autofill tools eliminate repetitive work for general practitioners, giving them the capacity to see a larger number of patients. If you run a specialist practice, your doctors might find annotations to be especially useful. They can mark out treatments on images not only for their own reference, but also to aid their discussion with patients on procedures and care developments.  

5) Ensure Key Integrations are Set Up for Your Doctors

A fast and easy way to simplify work for your doctors and your front desk team is to set up key integrations at your practice. It’s a hassle for your team to keep switching between multiple platforms multiple times a day to do their work. Give your team everything they need in one place with an integrated clinic software like Plato. 

Let your doctors and front desk team manage all SmartCMS services, get lab/radiology results, and make NEHR submissions, directly from Plato. For example, your doctors can directly submit data to the National Immunisation Registry (NIR) without leaving their Plato EMR. At your front desk, staff can check claims and manage direct submissions to CHAS, Medisave, and Screen for Life (SFL) from Plato. Since your doctors get direct lab/radiology results in their Plato EMR, your team no longer has to scan any results, saving them time and effort. If your clinic is ready to voluntarily contribute to Singapore’s National Electronic Health Record (NEHR) system, it can choose to opt in through Plato, then manage NEHR submissions directly from the platform. As a forward-thinking practice management software, Plato had prepared its clinics for the introduction of NEHR early on, by becoming the first private clinic software to complete linkage with NEHR. Plato continuously builds and maintains key integrations for its healthcare providers, simplifying work for your clinic team and ensuring your practice keeps pace with all regulatory updates.

6) Empower Patients in Their Care

It’s hard for your doctors to improve outcomes when patients don’t understand their health condition or remember their care plan. For example, imagine you’re a type 2 diabetes patient. Your doctor has shared with you the types of foods to avoid eating. By the time you return home, you’d forgotten what was discussed. At your next visit, your doctor asks about your diet adherence. You admit you haven’t been fully committed, since you couldn't recall what was shared during your last visit. Generally, patients find it hard to retain verbal medical information, especially if they are elderly, anxious, or managing overwhelming data. Help patients recall what was discussed in visits by sharing written notes with them (Kessels, 2003). Studies have shown that sharing notes with patients helps them better understand their condition, improve their care adherence and outcomes (Delbanco et al., 2012; Tapuria et al., 2021; Vahdat et al., 2014).

Let your doctors share notes with patients using Plato. At any time and place, patients can pull up their shared notes to accurately reference what was discussed during visits. For example, at home, your patient with type 2 diabetes can refer to their written list of foods to avoid eating, thereby helping them better adhere to their recommended diet. It’s not just patients who find shared notes valuable. Multiple studies have found that the majority of patients and doctors who have experienced shared notes want to continue (Delbanco et al., 2012; DesRoches et al., 2020; Ralston et al., 2021; Scandurra et al., 2015; Wolff, Darer, et al., 2016). Types of notes to share with patients include summaries of visits, diagnoses, care plans, and lab/radiology results.      

In the third and final part of this blog series, we’ll look at how you can save time with every transaction by simplifying corporate billing and integrating payments.

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