Orthopedic eConsult Benefits For Primary Care Physicians and Nurse Practitioners
Aaron Morgenstein, MD, Orthopedic Specialist at AristaMD
What are the benefits of orthopedic eConsults for primary care physicians, nurse practitioners, and PAs?
Well, one, it comes down to efficiency. That can be extremely efficient by getting the answers to their further questions quicker rather than having a delay, having the hassle of having to refer, they can get answers to their orthopedic questions quicker. I think that there’s a lot that those in the primary care setting want to manage locally and they just need a little bit of guidance. And so getting that expert guidance with collaboration from an orthopedic surgeon via an eConsult can be of great value. I think another great benefit of having an eConsult platform is that nurse practitioners, physicians, and PAs, who have questions, the consultant, the orthopedic consultant, can provide educational value, either educational value about physical examination, maybe it value, educational value about differential diagnosis, maybe it educational value about which studies to do or what’s meaningful or what’s not meaningful. That kind of stuff. That can be super helpful as far as, and then the last thing I’d recommend is I do think eConsults, as I said earlier, eConsults can increase patient and family satisfaction, with their overall visits with you, uh, by seeking out an expert opinion, in collaboration with everything you’re doing for the patient locally.
Five Ways eConsults Support Value-Based Care
Combine your referral management platform with an eConsult solution to reduce patient wait times and the cost of care. Learn five ways our eConsults support value-based care by allowing primary care physicians, nurse practitioners or PAs to submit electronic requests for patient advice to our team of specialists to manage low-acuity patients.
#1 Help Patients Avoid Unnecessary Face-to-Face Specialty Visits
About 70% of eConsults can address what physicians typically send for a face-to-face specialty visit. As a web-based physician-to-physician consultation, there is no need for any particular technology or integration — the PCP orders the referral the same way they would traditionally order one. Or suppose the patient was to go face-to-face for a specialty consult with the provider using our referral nurse coordination, RNN service, and nurse navigators. In that case, our nurse will curate the eConsults by grabbing all of the data needed for the patient from the chart. Private health information is then sent to our specialist, who reviews the data and provides an evidence-based response on that patient’s best practice and management. Within four to six hours, the primary care provider receives a notification and can view the eConsult specialist’s recommendations.
The bottom line — for every specialty visit where we serve the patient using an eConsult and address issues through the primary care provider, we can fend off the need for three face-to-face visits. Also, once you gain specific knowledge from a specialist on a particular condition, you have the answer to the same question when it comes up again.
Aaron Morgenstein, MD
Orthopedist and Orthopedic Specialist at AristaMD
Dr. Morgenstein is a Board Certified Orthopedic Surgeon. He attended medical school at the University of Kentucky and residency at the Atlanta Medical Center. Dr. Morgenstein has a demonstrated history of working in the hospital & healthcare industry. Skilled in Clinical Research, Medical Education, Medicine, Public Speaking, and Healthcare Information Technology (HIT)