Introduction
The first step of the patient journey, as soon as they enter a healthcare organization, is the check-in process. Their experience during the check-in process usually ends up setting the tone for the rest of the visit. This is why all healthcare providers must pay special attention to their patient check-in process. They should look into how they can make the process efficient, less time-consuming, and hassle-free for the patient.
In this article, we will go through all the essential steps of the patient check-in process, understand the digital check-in process, and why shifting to a digital patient solution would be best in this day and age.
The Importance of Patient Check-in
Patient check-in is a series of steps a patient undertakes when visiting a healthcare organization. The motive of the patient check-in process is to verify patient information, give the patient an overview of what their day would look like, and essentially check if all documents are in order. It helps verify the identity of the patient and their insurance details, obtain the necessary consent, and make the appointment process smooth for the doctor as well.
How the staff interacts with the patient also makes up a vital part of the patient check-in process. The patient check-in process is not just all about document verification but also the first stage of the patient experience. The start of a good patient experience can only be facilitated by the staff and how warmly they welcome the patient. The staff should be trained to help make patients feel at ease, clear their queries if any, and assist them as and when required.
.A smooth check-in process empowers the staff to provide the best experience to patients, helps patients feel at ease, and ensures that the patient’s appointment goes smoothly.
Understanding the check-in process
In order to understand how one can make the check-in process more efficient, we need to understand all its important components. Here are all the essential steps of a patient check-in process.
Patient Signs In
The first step of the patient check-in process is the patient sign-in. Here, the patient is directed to fill out a sign-in sheet. The sign-in sheet usually contains the following:
• the patient’s name
• the time they arrived at the clinic
• their appointment time
• their doctor’s name
Usually, a clipboard with the sign-in form is given to the patient to complete this process.
Patient Verifies Insurance Coverage
The insurance verification process involves the patient submitting their insurance card. This step is essential to verifiy the patients current insurance coverage and to check if there have been any changes to the converge or provider since the patient’s last visit. The insurance card would need to be copied and attached to the patient chart if there are any changes in the coverage or if the insurance is issued by Medicaid.
Patient Verifies Face Sheet
The face sheet is printed prior to the patient’s arrival and contains information such as Name, address, date of birth, phone number, and sex. This information needs to be verified by the patient by adding their signature. The patient may suggest changes if there are any.
Patient Submits Co-Pay
It is important to collect the patient’s co-pay up front, before their appointment. Even though the patient may undergo procedures during their visit which could result in an additional payment being due at check-out, they need to submit their standard office visit co-pay at check-in.
Patient Waits to be Called Back to See Doctor
After all the necessary documents have been verified and submitted, the only thing left for the patient to do now is to wait for the doctor to call them. They would be directed to the lobby or waiting area for the same. This is also the step of the process at which the patient is informed of delays if any. This concludes the patient check-in process.
Introducing Digital Patient Check-in
Patient check-in is an indisputable part of a patient’s journey. It is the doorway to the entire journey. We saw that each step of the patient check-in is crucial and cannot be overlooked. The traditional process, which is signing in with a paper pen, verifying documents, etc could take a long time which could prove frustrating to the patient. Luckily we are living in a technologically advanced day and age which allows us to automate and shift processes digitally.
Digital patient check-in is a process that shifts the entire patient check-in and intake process online in a HIPAA-compliant manner. With digital patient check-in patients can fill in intake forms and verify documents just by sitting in the comfort of their homes. This way when they reach the clinic/hospital all they need to do is wait for their appointment turn.
As of recent surveys, about 85-90% of healthcare providers have implemented some form of digital check-in process in their practices. This includes hospitals, clinics, and smaller healthcare providers.
The Digital Patient Check-in process can be facilitated through Digital Patient Check-in software. The benefits of digital patient check-in are multifold. Let’s have a look.
Benefits of Digital Patient Check-in
Reduces Patient Wait Time
Perhaps the greatest advantage of digital patient check-in is that it helps reduce patient wait time. Through digital patient check-in in patients can fill out forms and verify documents before arriving at the hospital. With this important step out of the way, all they have to do now is wait for their appointment.
Digital check-in systems can reduce the average patient check-in time by 50-70%. This efficiency helps in minimizing wait times and improving overall patient flow.
Enhanced Patient Experience and Engagement
With a significant reduction in patient check-in time, patients would feel more at ease about their upcoming visit. Reduced operational tasks for the staff means they would also be able to greet and help create a welcoming environment for the patient. These result in an improvement in patient experience.
Since digital patient check-in involves sending and receiving forms, documents, etc over messaging channels, you’ll notice that patient engagement has also increased significantly.
Reduces Medical Errors
The digital patient check-in process can significantly reduce patient errors as all documents, forms, etc would be filled digitally and there would be no error induced by illegible handwriting. As data is synced between EHR and the digital patient check-in solution you can be assured that only correct information is transmitted to the patient.
Decreases Staff Workload
Your staff will no longer need to hand out clipboards to every patient, verify the details manually, upload them to the system, and update documents. All of these things can be achieved by adopting digital patient check-in solutions that can easily automate the entire process. This would result in a significant decrease in staff workload, freeing them up to concentrate on important tasks such as patient engagement and care.
Compliance to HIPAA
Adoption of digital patient check-in can only be done if done through HIPAA compliance means. Thankfully, solutions that offer digital patient check-in adhere to HIPAA compliance and ensure that all information transmitted between the patient and the provider is done in an encrypted and secure manner.
How does digitizing the process enable efficient Digital patient check-in?
What exactly does the digital patient check-in process entail, that makes it efficient? Let’s have a look.
Reminders ensure patients turn up for the appointment on time
The digital patient intake process starts with sending reminders to patients about their upcoming appointments. With the help of a digital intake solution, you can set up multiple reminders leading up to the day of the appointment. This feature allows patients time to take action for their appointment whether it be remembering and turning up for the appointment or canceling or rescheduling appointments if they cannot make it.
Appointment reminders have been reported to reduce no-show rates by 30-50% on average.
Sending Digital Intake forms prior to patients’ hospital visits reduces wait time.
The digital patient intake process allows for the delivery of forms electronically. By doing so, the patient can fill out the forms at their convenience before visiting the clinic. This way, when they visit the clinic the wait time would be significantly reduced. Here are some forms that you can send electronically in a secure manner:
- Insurance information
- Demographic and Medical History form
- Consent form for scheduled procedure if any
- Co-pay submission
What to Look for in a Digital Patient Intake Solution?
Now that we know how much a digital patient intake process can help a practice. Let’s look at what are some of the features a digital patient intake solution can offer:
Automatic Patient Reminders
This feature sends appointment reminders automatically by syncing with the EHR. The integration of the digital patient intake solution/software with the EHR facilitates the sending of automated appointment reminders. So, if you wish to have this feature make sure that whatever patient intake software you use offers an integration with your EHR.
An Intuitive Dashboard for Staff
An easy-to-use dashboard will make navigating the intake tool easy. If the software is too complicated, it might end up taking up more time rather than saving time. It should be quite easy for the user to send intake forms and also create new forms if necessary.
Ideally, the information collected through the form should also be able to stay in the database and sync with EHR if necessary. This will help keep information about patients up to date.
Collection of Patient forms and Ability to create patient forms
Digital patient intake solution allows features for not only sending forms electronically in a HIPAA-compliant manner but also the creation of forms from scratch. Through this feature, you can customize the forms according to your practice needs.
Once the patient submits the form, it will be stored securely in the software and synced with the EHR to keep information up to date.
Sending patient forms digitally
The digital patient check-in solution should have a feature for secure delivery of forms. Through this feature, one can send forms by simply selecting the intended form(s) and adding the recipient. Furthermore, these forms are sent through secure means by sending a link to a secure chat portal. This ensures that HIPAA compliance is maintained while sending forms digitally.
Secure Messaging
Secure messaging is an essential feature especially when dealing with the healthcare industry. Any communication done with the patient needs to be done in a HIPAA-compliant manner. Secure messaging is a feature that allows communication in a HIPAA-compliant manner. So it’s important that the software you choose offers secure messaging. Only when using secure messaging can you send and receive patient intake forms.
EHR Integrations
Features of a digital patient check-in system can only function properly if EHR integrations exist. This is because only through an EHR integration can one utilize features such as automated appointment reminders and digital sending of forms.
How Emitrr can enable smooth Digital patient check-in?
What exactly will the process of digital patient check-in look like with a software like Emitrr?
Let’s look at the steps one could follow to digitize their check-in procedure:
Integrate with your EHR
Once you have logged into your Emitrr account, you can start by integrating your EHR with Emitrr. To do so, simply navigate to the left navigation panel and select “settings”. Select “integrations” under general settings, as shown below:
Upon selecting “integration” you can choose your EHR from the list, by clicking on
“Settings” under your chosen software. Iron out the details of how you want the
Integration to function and there you have it, your EHR and Emitrr are connected.
Send forms securely
Once you have integrated with your EHR, you will be able to access all your patient’s contact numbers on Emitrr. To request a patient to submit a form, you can navigate to
“Send:” on the top right corner. Next, you can search for contacts in the recipient box or add a new number by simply typing it in.
In the message editor box add your message and to request a form submission, simply click on the three dots and select “Form Request”. Then select the form you want to send the patient through the form drop-down menu.
You will see the form ID in the message editor, but upon sending the recipient will receive this as a link, like so:
When the recipient opens the link they will be redirected to the forms page, where they can fill in the details and submit it.
You can also request the patient to submit more than one form by creating a form bundle and sending it. To send a form bundle, you can select the bundle drop-down instead of the select form drop-down. You can access the list of all save form bundles in the drop-down.
Create your own form and form bundle
- You can create and customize your own form by navigating to “Forms” in the navigation panel. Then select “Forms and Bundles” > “Forms”>“New Form”> “Start from Scratch”.
After these steps, you will be taken to a form builder page.
On this page you can;
- Give the form a name
- Add your company logo
- Drag and drop your intended elements by choosing from “Form Elements”
- You can add multiple pages to the form by selecting “add page” on the bottom right of the form.
- Once done you can select “Save”
You can set up email notifications for each time a patient submits the form
navigating to “settings” on the form page and adding the required email ID.
b. You can create your own form bundle by navigating to “ Forms and Bundles ”> ” Bundles ”> ” New Bundle ”. Next, give the bundle name and select the forms you wish to add to the bundle. Finally, select “create”.
Send automated appointment reminders
To send automated appointment reminders to patients you can navigate to
“Campaigns” > ”Automated”. You can either turn on an automated campaign from the
List or create your own automated campaigns by selecting “Create automated
Campaign”
Send emergency text alerts based on schedule
Emitrr offers a schedule-based texting feature that allows you to send text alerts to
Patients. To access this feature you can go to “Calendar” on the left navigation panel.
You can filter contacts based on providers, date range, customer name and then
Send text messages to these selected contacts. In case, your clinic needs to be closed due to an emergency you can utilize this feature to quickly inform all patients scheduled for that day.
Patient Check-in FAQs
Patient check-in is the registration procedure a patient undergoes when entering a healthcare facility. The check-in process requires the patient to fill out a couple of forms such as a patient intake form, insurance verification, patient history, etc.
The patient check-in process is important because it enables the healthcare facility to correctly identify the patient and their insurance details and make the appointment process smooth.
A digital patient check-in is a process that allows healthcare organizations to shift the process to the digital medium. Through a digital patient check-in process, one can send all necessary patient registration forms, insurance verification forms, etc via text or email in a secure way. This way when the patient visits the healthcare facility they do not have to spend time filling out these forms and can directly go for their appointments.
Conclusion
The check-in process is a vital part of the patient journey. It is the gateway to the patient’s experience with the healthcare facility. This process includes verification of essential patient information prior to the patient’s appointment. The traditional method of patient check-in often includes the patient writing down the details with pen and paper, making it a tiresome and time-consuming process.
To mitigate this a shift to a digital patient intake process is needed. The digital intake process allows healthcare facilities to send necessary patient intake forms online. The patients can fill these forms digitally in the comfort of their homes. This way when patients arrive for their appointment all they need to wait for is the appointment itself. A digital patient intake solution can help you achieve this and comes with many benefits and features as we discussed in the sections above. If you are ready to get started with a digital intake software for your organization, schedule a demo with Emitrr today!
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