While there are many benefits to adopting an EHR for your medical practice, in our experience, many practices are not given the full picture of how adopting an EHR will change their practice internally and from a patient-facing perspective.
We’ve seen practice after practice invest a large sum in a new EHR, and then as they begin to roll it out in their practice, realize that there are many issues they hadn’t anticipated.
One issue that’s often not anticipated is the difference in patient customer service. With a big EHR and their billing infrastructure comes less personalized customer service. Patients are often led through phone menu after phone menu, at the end of which they finally (maybe) get to speak to a real person.
Especially for a practice that has previously managed all of their billing in-house, this difference in customer service can be jarring for patients. It can lead to patient dissatisfaction and even potentially lower collection rates as patients get fed up with trying to get their questions answered.
One way to mitigate this is to prepare your patients for the transition to your new billing infrastructure. Distribute materials or talk with patients to let them know that you are moving to a new billing system and thus their process for getting questions answered will be different.
Another way is to skip your EMR’s billing department all together and hire an outsourced medical biller like Clinic Service. One of the things that sets Clinic Service apart is our excellent customer service. When your patients call, they aren’t forced to talk to an automated service or put on hold for 20 minutes. Our billing staff are there to answer their questions and help them understand their bills so they feel listened to and understood. The result: you get paid quicker!
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