How to see patients more effectively and efficiently

Dr. Sander is a Canadian family physician who is always passionate to improve the care he provides to patients in a more efficient and effective manner. As a founding member of TrueVation Technologies, Dr. Sander and his team created PatientPrep, an innovative App that improves “patient experience, clinical outcomes and the productivity of physicians”, which he will discuss in this article. Truevation Technologies was recently accepted into Blueprint Health in New York City. If you’d like to join the physicians already using PatientPrep, or would like to learn more about the platform, please email him at [email protected] or visit www.truevation.com.

Like all healthcare professionals, I’ve experienced the day-to-day stresses of caring for patients during my almost 10 years as a physician.

I’ve always been intrigued with how technology can make a meaningful impact on the care we provide. This mindset has me continually asking – how can we do things better?

We have a tough job as MDs – we have to collect, analyze, diagnose and treat in only a few minutes. This doesn’t include the time it takes to complete the post-visit documentation.

Couple this challenge with a fast paced work environment that is full of distractions, and it’s easy to see why 46% of physicians describe themselves as being burnt out.1 Medicine is complex and hard; putting significant demands on the physician.

Physicians work long hours trying to complete their post-visit documentation and usually are running behind schedule. The long hours spent doing paperwork isn’t the glamorous part of medicine.

In response, I kept exploring if there is a way to collect structured symptom & condition specific medical information from patients prior to the visit? Can we somehow ensure that all the key questions are asked for each condition and all the red flags are identified for billing and clinical purposes? Is it possible to use this information to streamline the creation of post-visit documentation, and not have to put in these extra hours to complete this documentation?

It’s been an exciting couple years as a group of physicians, software developers and health IT entrepreneurs created the PatientPrep platform to solve these problems. The platform automates the collection and documentation of symptom / condition specific medical information by engaging patients prior to their doctor’s visit.  Each physician can control the questions being asked and the answer selections each patient chooses from to ensure every piece of information received is genuinely useful.

PatientPrep can work on the same computer screen as any electronic record system. In addition, PatientPrep summaries can be transferred into a patient’s electronic record at their doctor’s medical facility to be used as the post-visit clinical note or consultation letter. This makes things so much easier, while saving considerable time and energy.

Now that I’ve been using PatientPrep in my practice for over 7 months, I’ve increased my productivity, while providing an even higher quality of care to my patients. With PatientPrep, my clinical documentation is thorough, while taking less time to produce, and my patients are becoming more engaged in their care.

The biggest lessons learned while building PatientPrep – ensure you build a solution that enhances physician productivity while seamlessly fitting into existing workflows, enable physicians to customize and control the way technology is used in their practice, and lastly, continually engage physicians and patients who understand how the solution will work in the real world.

Fortunately, based on feedback from end users, PatientPrep is hitting the mark on solving a big pain point suffered by physicians.

References

1.  Peckham, Carol. Physician Burnout: It Just Keeps Getting Worse. MedScape Multispecialty, Physician Lifestyle Report. 2015. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/838437 Accessed February 20, 2016.