When you run a small scale health clinic, you have a whole lot of responsibility on your hands. One thing that you will find yourself having to do for the sake of your patients and in order to protect yourself legally too is creating, storing, and managing patient records on a daily basis. Doing this efficiently will allow medical staff to access important information regarding the individuals they’re caring for at a moment’s notice. It will also protect patient confidentiality and reduce chances of data being leaked and patients facing potential problems associated with identity theft and fraud. Here are just a couple of different things that you should do in order to manage patient records as effectively as possible.
Invest in a Portable Workstation
Generally speaking, when operating a health clinic, you may find that you are dealing with many patients who are not very mobile. They may have difficult moving, or a doctor may have requested that they stay seated or bedbound. So, you’re not always going to be able to move a patient to your office in order to collect details or note down their condition for necessary paperwork. However, you probably don’t want to have to move a desk out near to their bed in order to complete the work at their bedside. There’s not likely to be sufficient room to do this and it involves a lot of lifting and inconvenience. Instead, you should invest in a portable Workstation on Wheels. This hospital grade equipment will allow you and other staff to access and create electronic health records at the point of care. If you have a particularly small clinic, you will only have to invest in one and this can be wheeled from one patient to another as and when required.
Hire Health Record and Patient Administration Staff
Chances are that you have a lot on your plate already. You could massively benefit from hiring specialists in health record keeping and patient administration. They should be qualified and experienced in the field and can take care of health records and patient administration on your behalf. Potential roles to recruit for include:
- Health records assistant
Individuals in these roles will undertake an administrative role, locating, retrieving, tracking, and delivering patients’ health records in good time to relevant recipients and destinations. They will also maintain patient records and case notes.
- Medical summariser
This individual will summarise all medical notes and letters, providing a concise and accurate summary of a patient’s medical history.
- Patient administrative team leader
This member of staff will maintain appointment systems, referrals, and record keeping.
- Waiting list coordinator
This employee will monitor waiting lists, ensuring that they are up to date. They will also identify and monitor trends to help improve your practice’s delivery of care.
The number of staff that you will need will depend entirely on the scale of your health clinic, but these are just a few ideas to get you started in the right direction.
Managing patient records is an extremely important part of running any small scale health clinic. Hopefully, the above information will help you to achieve this effectively without problems cropping up along the way!
