WebPT’s intuitive EMR can help you cover all your clinical and logistical bases. But, to get the most bang for your buck, you and your staff should be using the application to its full potential. On that note, even the experts among us could benefit from a brief reminder course in Front Office 101 to get their practices running a little smoother. With that, here are five hacks to make your life a little easier when using the WebPT Front Office Package.
1. Schedule recurring patient visits.
The Issue
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it’ll almost certainly take several days, weeks, or months for you to restore each patient’s level of function. So, instead of manually inputting each patient visit one-by-one, it makes sense to schedule out these appointment reminders all at once.
The Solution
To save yourself time, use the Copy feature (shown above) to schedule multiple appointment reminders for a specific patient. This option allows you to “paste” the patient’s profile into future appointment slots. Just be sure to avoid double-booking patients.
According to John Strobot, an enterprise training specialist at WebPT, this feature is also great for scheduling recurring interoffice tasks and to-dos—like department meetings, employee time-off requests, and lunches. That way, you’ll waste less time scheduling—which means you’ll have more time to get down to business.
2. Adopt a patient-case naming convention.
The Issue
Scheduling can prove difficult—and just plain confusing—if:
- one or more of your patients share the same name;
- a patient receives treatment in multiple disciplines; or
- your rehab practice has multiple clinic locations.
The Solution
To ensure each patient sees the correct therapist, shows up to the right clinic, and receives the correct treatment, Bradley LaFave, WebPT’s training manager, suggests developing a system to limit any confusion. For example, if multiple patients have the name “Brian Spencer,” you may want to capture specific demographic and treatment information—found in documentation—that denotes the patient’s date of birth, therapy discipline, injury, and original date of service. Use this simple hack to not only limit confusion, but also maintain a better running log of individual patient care.
3. Create clinic-specific calendars.
The Issue
If your rehab therapy practice has multiple clinics, it’s imperative to have a specific calendar for each location to avoid:
- documenting in the wrong patient charts;
- reporting inaccurate or invalid patient data; and
- creating confusion when trying to schedule patients.
The Solution
Strobot urges providers to create clinic-specific calendars—rather than using a master calendar that serves the entire company—to avoid generating confusion or errors. Plus, as shown above, your front-office staff can easily send out patient appointment reminders that are specific to each clinic.
4. Manage daily patient documentation progress.
The Issue
When you’re busy treating patients all day, it can be tough to keep track of your documentation tasks for each one. Looking for an easy way to identify which notes you still need to complete and/or finalize? WebPT has you covered.
The Solution
Stacey Kulm, Member Care manager at WebPT, encourages therapists to use the color-coded guide within the application’s Agenda feature to quickly get a pulse on the documentation progress for each patient. Here’s what each color means:
- Red: You haven’t started the note.
- Yellow: You’ve started the note but haven’t finalized it.
- Green: You’ve finalized the note.
In a perfect world, you would have green dots next to all your patients’ names.
5. Set up a mobile shortcut.
The Issue
When you’re leaving the clinic after a jam-packed day, the last thing on your mind is checking the next day’s schedule of appointments. I mean, you love your job—but you have a date with your DVR to watch The Voice and the season finale of Westworld. Tomorrow can wait.
The Solution
We carry our smartphones everywhere—and when you have the power of a cloud-based scheduling software, you can quickly pull up your calendar anywhere, anytime. With that in mind, we encourage you to bookmark the WebPT dashboard on your smartphone’s browser. This way, you can easily check appointment times and details. Pssh, and they say we spend too much time on our gadgets.
Pro tip for iOS users: Want a super quick way to access the WebPT application while on-the-go? Simply create a shortcut on your smartphone’s home screen. To do this, open the application in your browser, click the square with an up arrow icon at the bottom of your screen, and choose “Add to Home Screen.” A shortcut with the WebPT logo—it will look like all your other apps—will then be added to your home screen. Voilà!
Therapy providers should be focused on providing exemplary care—not overcoming logistical barriers. And while putting WebPT’s Front Office Package to work for your practice is certainly a step forward in the right direction, adopting these hacks will save you and your staff even more valuable time and energy—and ensure all clinical operations run smoothly.
