Why Your Medical Secretary Needs EMR Software
Physicians and their medical secretaries use electronic medical records (EMR) software to manage patient information in the healthcare industry. As such, let us list down some of the reasons why your medical secretary needs EMR software in your clinic.
The Role of EMR in the Healthcare Industry
When using EMR software, you can manage patient records, including their medical history, prescriptions, and medications. You can even store other information, including their respective diagnoses and lab results. EMR software also allows you to easily schedule your patients’ check-ups, tests, and other medical appointments.
Now, why would your medical secretary need EMR? Before answering that, let us discuss first what a medical secretary does in a clinic or hospital.
What Does a Medical Secretary Do?
A medical secretary (also known as a medical administrative assistant) performs administrative functions in a medical environment such as a clinic or a hospital. They are expected to keep the operations of your clinic or hospital running as smoothly as possible.
Because a medical secretary performs front-office responsibilities such as greeting your patients when they enter your facility, they should be someone who knows how to interact with various kinds of patients. For this reason, a medical secretary should have a welcoming and friendly demeanor at all times. They should also know the offerings and workings of the facility, especially that they will be addressing customer concerns and inquiries.
Moreover, a medical secretary must have strong communication skills as they will be tasked to answer phone calls and emails. These calls involve scheduling patient appointments according to your availability or reminding patients of their scheduled appointments. They will also have to get in touch with insurance companies to verify a patient’s eligibility for particular treatments to ensure that reimbursement is possible. Aside from this, a medical secretary is also responsible for processing patient invoices and bills payments.
A medical secretary also deals with your office database, including storing and organizing patient files. Based on these records, you can also ask them to create summaries or reports when needed. Traditionally, medical secretaries will enter or transcribe data from handwritten notes, medical reports, forms, and other documents; therefore, they should also have competent typing skills.
Additionally, because clinics and hospitals undergo high-pressure situations that deal with life and death, a medical secretary should have the stamina and capability to handle multiple tasks simultaneously. They are also expected to be familiar with particular medical terms to guarantee that there is proficiency, especially when it comes to medical coding.
Why Your Medical Secretary Needs EMR Software?
Here are some of the reasons why your medical secretary needs EMR software to help perform their clinical functions efficiently:
Quicker Appointment Scheduling
Your medical secretary needs EMR software because the software will help them schedule patient appointments with ease. In addition, the best EMR software will provide your medical secretary with a calendar showing the times when you are available or not. As such, the software also helps reduce the possibility of scheduling patients at the same time.
Reduced Manual Transcription
With EMR, you reduce the need for your secretary to manually input notes, forms, and the like into your database. Patient records become digitized. Because of this, you also reduce the need for keeping physical patient charts and folders, which would require storage area and additional maintenance costs.
Faster Reports Generation
You may ask your medical secretary to create patient summaries or reports. As such, your medical secretary needs EMR software so they can automatically generate reports and summaries based on the information inputted in their respective records. Thus, you can quickly get a consolidated report on your patients’ consultation sessions, exams, lab results, invoices, payments, and the like.
Streamlined Invoicing and Bills Payments
There are EMR software that can provide you with billing features. Through the software, your medical secretary can conveniently and efficiently manage the payment procedures of your patients. These would include invoicing and bills payment. Because of this, your secretary no longer needs to manually keep track of patients who still need to pay their dues.
Convenient Accessibility and Ease of Use
You may ask your medical secretary to provide you with patient records when you need them. That can happen anytime. As such, your medical secretary needs EMR so they can have access to your patient records whenever the need arises. Fortunately, through the use of cloud-based EMR software, your medical secretary can gain access to patient records using any device, anytime and anywhere, as long as they have an internet connection.
Improve Medical Secretary Work Efficiency with EMR
Do you see now why your medical secretary needs EMR in performing their administrative and clerical responsibilities? We bet you can’t wait to integrate it into your work operations! As such, if you are looking for something that can help improve your medical secretary’s work efficiency, try out electronic medical records software now!
