Technology
When you walk into an office and see a wall of file cabinets, you are walking into an office that has not taken advantage of the many technologies available to improve their services. Our office is paperless. At our office patients don’t fill out initial visitation forms, they won’t be waiting for the secretary to locate/create their chart, prep an exam form, they won’t see a pile of charts on the desk needing to be filed and they certainly don’t need to worry about their charts being misplaced as is common in non-paperless environments. Running our practice electronically has afforded us many advantages including:1. Reduced Redundancy, Greater Accuracy. Reducing redundancy is the hallmark of efficiency. After the time of input, patient information is never subject to human error again. We have effectively reduced virtually all redundancy which impacts almost every aspect of our business. Example, patient loses their prescription and wants a copy. In a traditional office, the secretary will have to find the chart, fill out the prescription, give it to the doctor to be signed, then put the chart back (let alone charge you for this service!). At our office, we just press print! No errors in prescriptions, glasses orders, referrals, progress reports, contact lens orders, appointment cards, etc.. By allowing the system do these tasks for us, we are allotted more time doing what we enjoy most… spending time with our patients. In fact, the greatest redundancy we do have at our office is the number of backups we perform to keep everyone’s information safe and secure.
2. Saving you money. Less administration, no errors in orders, no paper files & forms, no cabinets taking valuable rental space simply means less overhead. Less overhead means our mark-ups are less than retail. Compare and you’ll see! While we have a wonderful selection of over 1000 eye glass frames & sunglasses at our office, sometimes patients find a pair a eye glass frames elsewhere and then order them through our office… because they like our prices… and our service!
3. Faster Orders, Faster Service. Since we keep all of the necessary information electronically (frame dimensions, prescriptions, lens details), our system automatically compiles the information together and your order is sent as soon as it is made. No more waiting for lab forms to be filled and faxed out. This means patients get their orders faster!
4. Better care with Faster Referrals and Progress Reports. When patients need a referral to the specialist or a progress report for their family physician, the doctor will have these faxed out while they sit in the exam chair! No more forms sitting on the doctor’s desk waiting to be filled out and then given to the secretary to fax when he/she gets the chance. The sooner this information is sent, the sooner patients get taken care of. No more wondering if the doctor has completed these tasks!
5. More Secure. File cabinets don’t use passwords to secure your information!
6. We’re Green. Being paperless saves trees! We like trees!