FREDERICK, MD – House calls are unheard of these days, but with growing technology patients can access physician services virtually from their home computers, saving both time and money.
Frederick Primary Care Associates (FPCA) has employed a new patient portal that allows them to provide better customer service, improve the efficiency of office operations and save money. By partnering with Kryptiq, a Portland, Ore.-based provider of healthcare connectivity solutions, FPCA is able to provide patients with secure access to information stored in their Allscripts clinical and business systems.
“Our Web site provides great experience for our patients, and Allscripts is an excellent platform for our business.,” said Ed Wrzesinski, executive director of FPCA. By connecting the two with Connect IQ, we can realize our fundamental vision – providing more valuable online services, reducing the opportunity for error and increasing our operational efficiency. It’s a win all around.”
The portal allows patients to receive lab results, access and change their contact and insurance information, request prescription refills and submit appointment inquiries, saving both the patient and physician time and money. Account balances are not available online yet, but when patients receive paper bills in the mail they may use the physician’s site to pay the bill.
Connect IQ also passes along the information to places such as the billing department, speeding up the revenue process. It cuts down on the time a courier would have had to carry statements to the billing department.
Studies indicate Americans make 2.8 non-office healthcare contacts for every one actual office appointment. According to Malcolm Costello, senior vice president of Marketing and Strategic Relations for Kryptiq, Connect IQ allows physicians to deal with those non-office contacts on their own time and streamline their office staff needs.
“Mid-level providers are also able to spend time on revenue producing activities,” he said. “The digital experience is just part of what has been achieved.”
Hillsboro Advanced Surgical Care in Hillsboro, Ore. uses Connect IQ in conjunction with its eClinicalWorks platform.
“Connect IQ Secure Messaging gave us a noticeable return on investment within one week,” said Linda Anderson, office manager of HASC. “eClinicalWorks is a fantastic platform for managing our clinical information and Kryptiq has allowed us to extend this value beyond the walls of our practice.”
According to Kryptiq, 70 percent of patients who are given the choice of mailing in their health information, showing up early at the doctor’s office to fill out paper forms in the waiting room or using the patient portal choose to use Connect IQ.
“It’s like having house calls all over again when I do it from my laptop,” Costello said.