What to look for in an EHR system for multilocation optometry

Having multiple locations for your optometry practice can have some massive benefits – you get more coverage area, more staff with deeper expertise, saved money on service and platform fees, increased efficiency, improved performance, greater sales, and more.

But managing those multiple locations is also much more complicated than running a single officer. You have more complex scheduling needs, more complex coding and billing needs, more phone calls to field, difficulty with employee scheduling, the possibility of offering different products in different locations, and problems with maintaining continuity across what could be a broad geographic area.

That is why your electronic health record needs to be up to the task. Electronic health records can streamline key operations and save you time and money, allowing you to offer more efficient care to your patients while also automating certain tasks that free up your staff from the need to engage in tedious and repetitive work.

While electronic health record systems can have a host of benefits for your optometry practice, multilocation practices need to choose their optometry EHR software carefully. Cloud-based EHR for multilocation practices need many of the same capabilities that those for single location practices need as well as increased ability to scale and offer EHR services simultaneously across several offices.

This blog investigates cloud-based optometry electronic health record software for multi-location practices and lets you know what features you need to make sure any system you chose has. Let’s get started!

What is cloud-based EHR?

Cloud-based electronic health record systems are scalable tools that allow practices to maintain patient files online instead of on servers at a local health care provider. The benefit of cloud-based EHR is that optometry offices contract with these services generally as a software-as-a-service model, meaning that instead of buying, then installing and maintaining a local EHR system, these cloud-based tools are accessed using an internet connection.

This has several benefits. First of all, optometry offices do not need to buy or maintain expensive hardware and servers. Instead, to gain access to the electronic health record, all you need is a login ID, a password, and a device that can access the internet – a desktop computer, laptop computer, tablet, or even a smartphone.

Once online and logged in to the EHR, you get all the benefits of a traditional EHR and few of the drawbacks. There are tools for coding and billing, scheduling automation tools that save time, insurance verification tools, and more.

Features to look for in a multilocation practice optometry EHR software

First of all, when looking for an optometry EHR system, you will want to look for a few basic features no matter if you have one location or 100. Those top features include:

• Easy patient scheduling that saves you time and keeps your patients happy
• Smart patient workflows that make patient encounters easier and more rewarding for your staff
• Task management capabilities that help you clearly delineate who should be doing what
• Built-in templates and order sets
• The ability to create the reports you want
• EHR software solutions that are accessible from any device at any time
• A clear, attractive, and simple to use dashboard

Now that we have got that out of the way, here are the key features to look for in an optometry EHR system for multilocation practices:

• System accessibility from any location: Yes, we mentioned this above, but it bears repeating here. As a multi-location practice, you will likely have staff traveling from one office to another using either a location device or their own. To save time and eliminate confusion, your staff needs to be able to jump on your EHR and get going the second they walk in the door.
• The ability to generate reports for one office or the entire system: You may want to look at operations at one location to troubleshoot a problem, or your board needs a full-company report that details metrics from all of your locations so you can see trends or investigate issues as they occur. Report generation for these different scenarios is important in multilocation practices. This will save you time and money, allowing staff the ability to build reports with just a few mouse clicks.
• Varying permission levels: It is inevitable that some of your staff will only need to be able to access EHR data for patients at one site, while others may need EHR data for all locations in one region or one state, and others will need access to everything. Permission is a much more complex task when your optometry practice has multiple locations – ensuring you can fully customize your permissions when you have multiple locations is key.
• Sophisticated scheduling ability: Scheduling can easily become complicated when you have multiple providers working at different locations at different times, or when one scheduler is managing scheduling for more than one location. Plus, when you have more than one office, your patients may wish to change the location of their appointment to better fit their schedule and preferences. Without a sophisticated EHR scheduling tool, you will wind up manually coordinating schedules between different locations – a practice that exposes you to a much greater likelihood of mistakes.
• Synthesis with coding and billing operations: With multiple locations, coding and billing can quickly become a mess, especially as patients move between offices, different insurance providers cover different exams and conditions, and some offices have a higher percentage of patients on public insurance. A smart EHR system for multilocation practices will handle coding and billing at different locations so that you’re your operations remain smooth.

Looking for a multi-location EHR for your optometry practice? Check out Eye Care Leaders

Eye Care Leaders is one of the industry’s leaders in intelligent EHR systems and optometry EHR software, with solutions that will work perfectly whether you have a one-person office or dozens of locations.

Eye Care Leaders has a wealth of EHR tools that are designed to improve, enhance, and coordinate every aspect of your eye care practice, with solutions for practice management, ASC, EHR, retail management, revenue cycle management, patient payment collection, MIPS assurance, and more.

To learn more, contact Eye Care Leaders today.