Cindy Gulley is director of ancillary services at NextGen Healthcare. As a healthcare industry leader, she specializes in global partnerships and has established successful business collaborations in the United States and throughout India.
A primary objective at NextGen Healthcare is to ease the documentation burden that weighs heavily on physicians and other clinical providers. This burden has a real cost. The time documentation takes away from patient care represents a significant loss for medical practices and often results in lower revenue. Charting inaccuracy is another pain point; inaccurate documentation leads to lower reimbursement.
The issues run deeper. Physicians and other clinical providers often feel deprived of face time with their patients because they are so busy documenting. If a provider struggles with documentation and doesn’t have accurate records, they are more vulnerable in the event of a lawsuit. Care not documented is care not done.
What options are available to help alleviate this burden?
Respond to the need for real-time support
My colleagues and I began to search for the best way to respond to the growing demand for personalized, real-time documentation support.
A virtual live scribe is an individual who provides real-time documentation of a medical professional’s words and actions during their visit with a patient. Other documentation services—such as transcription and remote scribe—are provided after the encounter has ended. The virtual scribe inputs information into the EHR in real time during the encounter.
Virtual live scribes offer numerous advantages over traditional in-house scribes, including:
- As a virtual solution, there’s no need to hire and train additional personnel.
- It minimizes the intrusion on patient privacy. A virtual scribe connected through an online portal is less psychologically intrusive than a stranger in the exam room.
- A service provider can match virtual scribes to individual physicians, based upon education, experience within a specific specialty, personality factors, work habits, and the physician’s requirements. This ensures a personalized experience and promotes a positive provider-scribe relationship.
Find the right partner
To bring NextGen Virtual Live Scribe to market quickly, we forged a partnership with AQuity Solutions, an experienced, nationally respected virtual scribe services provider. I connected with a former colleague who was a marketing leader at AQuity, and we quickly realized the benefit that our combined solution could bring to ease providers’ burden.
Put accuracy and quality first
What struck me most about AQuity was their meticulous approach to recruiting and training scribes. They recognized early on that finding qualified professionals in the United States was challenging. As a result, they established partnerships with universities, actively seeking individuals with a strong medical background. Their dedication to quality impressed me, especially when compared to other companies that admitted to hiring individuals with minimal qualifications.
The importance of accuracy and quality can’t be overstated. AQuity's commitment to recruiting and training the right people makes all the difference. Consider these results:
- 98% Improvement in same-day chart closure rates
- 12% Improvement in average patient encounter rates
- Best in KLAS 2023 for virtual scribe solutions
- #1 Ranking in Black Book 2022 and 2023
In summary, AQuity’s track record, expertise, and dedication to quality align with our mission to enable better healthcare outcomes for all.
For more specific details about this exciting solution, check out our new virtual live scribe brochure.
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