As ASCs face an increasing pressure to manage business growth while keeping costs down and ensuring high quality care, more have begun to adopt technology solutions to address the challenges.
One way centers are streamlining tedious, manual processes is by transitioning from paper patient charts to digital patient charts. While this is a valuable first step, an integrated solution offers many additional advantages for ASCs in this changing environment.
Limitations of an Inferior Digital Chart
With a digital patient chart, ASCs can eliminate materials and storage fees required for paper charts, prevent charts from getting lost, and remove steps for breaking down charts and sharing information. This all leads to higher efficiency, lower costs, and overall stronger business operations.
But, there are still limitations with EMR charting systems that cause frustration for ASC staff. When a patient chart isn’t tightly integrated with an ASC management platform, it may not fully meet an ASC’s needs. Some of these limitations include:
- Vendor Support: If you use different vendors for your EHR and your business management system, it may not be clear who to contact for help.
- Claims Management: The interface of a connected EHR may limit what data is transferred back to the claims system, preventing claims and billing staff from seeing the complete picture.
- Inventory Management: If you track supply utilization using a paper chart, you still need to manually transfer the information to your supply chain system, which can result in incomplete documentation.
- Reporting: With siloed EHR charting systems and ASC business management systems, staff may need to manually transfer clinical information from the EHR to the ASC platform to generate case-specific reports.
Why Choose an Integrated Solution?
Many ASCs take a “Frankenstein” approach to technology, using multiple vendor solutions to make up an ASC management platform. Because systems often don’t speak fluently with each other, this approach makes it difficult to access critical patient information and causes workflow delays.
That’s why integration is essential to getting the most value out of your technology. Here are the top benefits of an integrated solution:
- One-time Entry: A single vendor management platform helps minimize errors and duplicate records. Your data resides in one database so you have better access to information.
- Centralized Data Management: Inventory, scheduling, claims, and reporting functions are all in one place so you don’t have to move between the EMR and various ASC platform modules.
- Comprehensive Patient View: Centralized functions provide ASCs with a comprehensive view of their patients, giving clinical and administrative staff a better understanding of specific patient needs.
- You-Centered Support: Having a single vendor provides you with the peace of mind that comes with having one contact for all your needs.
Questions to Ask
Once you’ve decided to pursue an integrated ASC management platform, there are a few questions you’ll want to ask potential vendors.
- Who owns my data? If you decide to part ways with the vendor, you’ll need access to your data, so make sure your agreement gives you the legal rights to it.
- What are your vendor support hours? You need to know where the support teams are located and what their standard hours are to ensure you’re always covered.
- How do you handle system training? Make sure you know exactly what you can expect in terms of your time and resource investment, and ongoing training opportunities.
An Integrated Platform Designed for ASCs
Simplify ASC digital patient chart that is tightly connected with our management platform, giving you the insight and control you need to run a more profitable center, identify opportunities for growth, and provide great care. We’ve designed our integrated ASC platform from the ground up to help you love the way you work.
To learn more, download our complete white paper on the benefits of an integrated ASC management platform.
