With a rise in wait times in healthcare and a decrease in healthcare workers nationwide, streamlining processes is more important than ever. That is why this year, we will see a significant rise in the number of physicians looking for solutions to aid with time and cost management. With eConsults and a leading referral management system, maintaining a healthy network is easier than ever.
What are the Benefits of an eConsult and Referral Management Solution?
eConsults
Patients have relied on their primary care physicians for years to find the best and most effective health care. Due to that, eConsults have always been around in one way or another. We have formalized the process of a curbside consultation and brought a safer and more secure way to do just that. An eConsult system streamlines the traditionally manual process of reaching out to find in-network specialty care for patients. This is cost-effective for both the physicians and the patients. Physicians keep patient care in-house. The patient avoids the long wait times in healthcare and the cost and time to receive advice from a specialist. When using eConsults, a practice can find that over 70% of specialist visits can be avoided.
On average, AristaMD specialists respond within 4-6 hours from when the eConsult was submitted. When a primary care provider requests an eConsult, the patient can often avoid the price of a separate specialist visit or the higher co-pay common for in-network/out-of-network specialists. The primary care provider saves the patient money, which signals to the patient that the physician truly cares about the patient’s financial and physical well-being — Maintaining a healthier patient network.
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Referral Management
Our combined platform allows you to use our referral management solution if you need more care. Referral management is a great way to avoid patient and revenue leakage, maximize time management and improve patient satisfaction — leading to a healthier patient network.
With 55-65% of referrals sent out-of-network, health system patient leakage costs are about $821,000 – $971,000 per physician. However, 1 in 4 health systems doesn’t know or track how much revenue is lost.
It is no surprise that patient leakage is a high contributor to lost revenue. When using a referral management solution, you take ownership of finding the correct specialist for your referring patient. By being able to check and verify insurance eligibility, you are automatically increasing the chances of patient compliance. You’ll never have to cancel or reschedule another patient because of insurance ineligibility again. Another often overlooked tool is patient notification. All of these small but meaningful tools lead to a decrease in patient retention and a decrease in network leakage, and revenue loss.
Unfortunately, there is a need now more than ever to combat an antiquated model of care. It is no surprise that eConsults and referral management is an adequate solution to many issues found in practices nationwide. The benefits of having a combined solution to these problems will soon become the norm for many practices.