How to improve efficiency in clinical operations

Clinical efficiency is about using resources to meet patient needs while being cost-effective, minimizing waste and maximizing productivity.

Efficient clinical operations lead to:

• Better patient care

• Reduced wait times

• Lower operation costs

• Improved performance

A major barrier to clinical efficiency is administrative burdens including paperwork, data entry, other manual nonclinical tasks as well as lack of access to all medical imaging that take time away from patient care and increase the risk of errors.

Here are some proven strategies to streamline workflows, reduce errors and enhance patient care.

1. Optimize physician time

Studies show clinicians spend 17% of their workweek searching for information across systems, which reduces their time with patients and can contribute to burnout.

Adopting technologies like enterprise document management and enterprise imaging can streamline access to patient records, not stored in the electronic health record (EHR), such as data from ancillary devices and medical images stored in multiple departmental archives.

Integrating these records into EHR workflows allows physicians and other clinicians to quickly access the information they need, freeing up more time for patient care.

Discover how UNC Health integrated enterprise imaging with its electronic health record (EHR).

> Read more | Future-proofing healthcare: AI as a catalyst for change

2. Eliminate paperwork

On average, 71% of organizations’ unstructured patient data and information residing outside of core health information technology apps is inaccessible and unavailable for analysis causing delays, increased workload and inefficiencies.

The solution is to integrate content and medical images within EHR workflows. By leveraging AI-based machine learning (ML), with an enterprise content services solution healthcare providers can automate the classification of patient records received via paper, fax or email. In addition, the establishment of an enterprise imaging solution provides both ubiquitous access to medical images throughout the ecosystem and the foundation to support research within various clinical workflows.

This speeds up clinicians’ access to crucial information and helps them make informed care decisions. For example, implementing a system that automatically digitizes and categorizes incoming records can reduce the time clinicians spend searching for patient information.

Learn more | Managing unstructured clinical content

3. Simplify health information management (HIM)

Efficient management of health information is essential to maintaining the integrity of patient records and ensuring compliance with regulations. However, manually managing vast amounts of medical data can be complex, time-consuming and prone to errors.

Healthcare providers can simplify health information management using technology solutions to automate the lifecycle of medical records — from scanning and indexing to compliant disposal — and help maintain EHR integrity while saving staff time.

Advanced technologies like AI-powered intelligent document processing (IDP) can revolutionize healthcare by streamlining workflows, ensuring compliance and improving data accuracy. This will help providers balance their administrative duties and continue to provide high-quality healthcare.

Tip: Implementing enterprise document management systems (EDMS) and IDP across the entire medical record lifecycle can save time and improve accuracy.

> Learn more | Streamline digital transformation for the HIM life cycle

4. Eliminate data silos and care blind spots

Data silos are common in healthcare. They create care blind spots with crucial patient information stored in multiple, disconnected systems. This can lead to delays as clinicians must access several databases and imaging systems to retrieve information.

Providing a single interface to review clinical documents and images greatly improves clinician efficiency and care collaboration. Consolidating data from various sources into one accessible dashboard helps healthcare providers reduce the time clinicians spend searching for information to make informed care decisions.

5. Enable better care through patient portals

Patient portals are an integral part of healthcare, offering patients easy access to their health records, test results and appointment schedules.

Studies show the use of patient portals can increase:

• Patient engagement

• Loyalty to providers

• Adherence to care plans

By enabling patients to access, view, share and upload images through portals, healthcare facilities can streamline workflow processes. For example, instead of burning CDs with medical images, health care providers can offer these images in their patient portals, enabling patients to share these images with consulting specialists directly through the portal before their appointment.

Tip: Implementing a robust patient portal that integrates seamlessly with existing EHR systems using an enterprise multispecialty medical imaging viewer like Hyland NilRead can lead to better patient engagement and more efficient workflows.

> Learn more | NilRead for patient portals

6. Streamline patient intake

The patient intake process can be time-consuming and create bottlenecks.

Enabling patient registration and consent using digital forms on mobile devices or PCs before arrival, reduces wait times and speeds up the intake process. Upgrading mobile and portal technology for digital forms and patient uploads further streamlines patient intake, making the process quicker and more efficient.

7. Enable better care collaboration for improved patient outcomes

By managing data relationships, documents and processes on a single solution, you can empower clinicians, researchers and other staff to effectively manage cases from inception to completion to support better outcomes. Flexible, low-code technology enables management for many different use cases, such as clinical trials, mental health care and more.

Technology that promotes real-time interactive clinician collaboration of cross-enterprise image communication, speeds second opinions and remote diagnoses. One example is a university medical center managing urgent neurology consults from a remote location for patients around its region. Since the start of its teleneurology program, patients have gained faster access to specialists for stroke diagnoses.

Patients that were experiencing a stroke per the collaborative consults were sent immediately to the university for care. With the success of the teleneurology program, telemedicine capabilities have been extended to other service lines through enhanced image sharing.

8. Use clinician-centered EHR design

It is equally important to consider the needs of clinicians when designing EHR systems. If care workflows should be patient-centric, EHRs interfaces should be designed with the clinician in mind.

A well-designed EHR interface like the Hyland Clinician Window that aligns with clinicians' workflows and is customized to suit their specific needs:

• Reduces their learning curve

• Minimizes wasted time

• Allows fast and easy access to information, like medical images, EKGs and consult notes that are not housed in the electronic health record

• Improves efficiency and enhances productivity

• Reduces frustrations and the likelihood of errors.

Tip: Work with your EHR provider to customize interfaces that align with your clinicians and workflows.

9. Choose the right technology partners

Selecting reliable technology partners is crucial for the success of any healthcare organization. When selecting technology providers, it's important to look for providers that offer:

• Robust support and services that enhance your health systems' workflows

• Technology solutions that integrate seamlessly with your existing systems, as this can greatly improve workflow efficiency

• Ongoing training, support and updates to ensure smooth operations and ensure that your technology continues to meet your needs as your organization grows

Tip: Evaluate potential technology partners based on their ability to integrate with your current systems and their commitment to long-term support and innovation.

Read the Bon Secours Mercy Health case study.

10. Measure performance continuously

Continuous improvement is essential for maintaining efficiency in clinical operations. Regularly evaluating clinical performance metrics helps identify inefficiencies and inform improvement strategies.

Gathering feedback from clinicians and staff ensures all stakeholders are involved in enhancing operations, leading to more effective and targeted solutions.

Tip: Accurate classification of records within EHR workflows can accelerate care insights and improve overall efficiency. Regular audits and feedback loops are key to maintaining high performance.

Advanced tools and solutions play a major role in improving clinical operation efficiency, helping healthcare providers streamline processes, reduce administrative burdens and enhance patient care. Here are some ways technology plays a part:

Ensuring visibility of entire patient records within EHR

Deploying electronic document management systems (EDMS) and transitioning paper-based and faxed patient records to digital formats can streamline clinician access to complete patient records. Using a VNA to extend access to medical images within EHR workflows ensures that all relevant information is readily available, enabling better-informed care decisions.

Automating health information management and revenue cycle processes

Utilizing enterprise document management and AI software can significantly reduce administrative errors and workloads, improving the efficiency of health information management and revenue cycle processes.

Yale New Haven Health, a nonprofit healthcare system, conducts 1.3 million imaging studies annually across various departments, emphasizing the need for a robust enterprise medical imaging strategy. To streamline operations and improve clinicians' access to data, the organization adopted AI and ML technologies to analyze large volumes of imaging data efficiently.

By leveraging APIs to extract data directly from the Hyland Acuo VNA solution, they integrated this data into third-party systems using advanced AI algorithms. This “central ingestion” point now serves as the hub for consolidating all clinical data onto a single, easily accessible interface.

Today, Yale New Haven Health depends on this centralized system to provide clinicians with seamless access to critical information, enhancing patient care and operational efficiency across the network.

> Learn more | Read the case study

Yale New Haven Health

Yale New Haven Health’s enterprise medical imaging strategy aggregates and manages distinct islands of data for better outcomes.

Hyland Healthcare software solutions are designed to support real-time healthcare delivery by integrating content and medical images within EHR workflows, providing benefits across the board as well as area-specific improvements:

Key benefits of Hyland solutions

• Integrate content and medical images: Improve care insights by embedding images and documents directly into clinical workflows.

• Deliver intelligent automation: Automate the lifecycle of medical records using Hyland Intelligent Document Processing, which provides document capture and processing automation, AI-driven document classification and intelligent data extraction.

• Drive payer digital transformation: Transition from legacy document management to enterprise content and intelligent document processing solutions to future-proof infrastructure.

• Empower patients: Enhance patient satisfaction by providing online access to medical images and forms, streamlining interactions and reducing administrative burdens.

Area-specific solutions

• Payers: Lower costs with low-code applications that automate processes.

• Clinical care: Enhance collaboration and decision-making by integrating content across clinical departments.

• Business of care: Automate business processes for improved efficiency and productivity.

• Enterprise and diagnostic medical imaging: Transform imaging workflows by centralizing and automating data management.

• Health information management: Accelerate care insights with accurate classification of records and streamlined workflows.

Improving efficiency in clinical operations requires an integration of the latest innovations, optimized workflows and continuous performance measurement.

Hyland Healthcare solutions support this by offering capabilities like content and medical image integration within EHR workflows, intelligent automation of medical records and digital tools to empower clinicians and patients.

> Learn more | Hyland Healthcare software solutions