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Meeting Staffing Needs: Looking Beyond COVID-19

15 December 2021
Blog

eClinicalWorks

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How eClinicalWorks and healow Bolster the Front Office

An October 2021 report from Fitch Ratings found that since February 2020 — when the COVID-19 pandemic began — employment in the U.S. healthcare industry has declined by 524,000 positions.

While COVID-19 played a role in the sharp losses felt in 2020-21, the nation’s healthcare worker shortage is a broader phenomenon that affects every kind of healthcare facility and practice and will be felt for years to come.

Addressing a long-term staffing shortfall

According to Mercer’s “2021 External Healthcare Labor Market Analysis,” healthcare staffing shortages are to be expected at the local, state, and national levels — and across all medical sectors — over the next five to 10 years.

The implication is clear: While help may be out there, finding it could be difficult in the years ahead.

But what if your next office superstar is already working for you? What if, with the right training, you could transform one or more of your existing staff into superusers? And help everyone in your office work smarter and more efficiently?

You can. And eClinicalWorks^® and healow^® can help you get started.

Tools for a more efficient front office

Thanks to Robotic Process Automation (RPA), the eClinicalWorks EHR streamlines manual and repetitive processes that would otherwise require hours of human effort. We have introduced bots to handle routine tasks in six key areas of practice workflows, including appointment booking, document routing, registration, referral management, statement processing, and payment posting.

You might say we introduced more bots so your staff can work less robotically and focus on doing the things that humans handle better than any robot — delivering care and kindness to patients.

Here are a few of the solutions we offer that could help you reinvent your front office.

healow Open Access^® lets patients request or book appointments online, anytime, and from any device. That means fewer phone calls for your staff and more time for them to work directly with patients.
healow CHECK-IN^™ handles the previsit work your front office used to manage by handing papers and clipboards to patients. We can’t make insurance updates and copayments go away, but we can put them online and let patients check in remotely.
healow Pay^™ replaces the time-consuming and error-prone process of printing, addressing, and mailing statements — and then waiting for payments to come in. healow Pay automatically generates and sends statements, which can mean faster collections and better financial performance.
eClinicalMessenger^® campaigns offer dozens of ways for your practice to reach out to your patients without staff having to spend hours reaching out to patients by phone, one at a time. Send appointment reminders, lab results, educational materials, statement reminders, and more — automatically and cost effectively.