Strengthen Physician Relationships with Unibased Systems’ Physician Portal
Providing much more than just scheduling, Unibased Systems Architecture (Unibased Systems) provides greater access and enhanced flexibility to maximize resources and improve communication, ensuring optimal performance for improved physician and consumer satisfaction. With Unibased Systems’ Physician Access physician portal, your physician offices have the convenience, ease and efficiency of access through the web, empowering them to schedule patients at your healthcare facility, and freeing them from the endless phone calls back and forth - saving time to focus on the most important task of all – the delivery of quality care.
What Access Means for Your Physicians
Now more than ever, it is vital for hospitals to build and maintain strong mutually beneficial relationships with their physicians. Increased access for physicians into your healthcare organization means improved relationships, increased referrals and revenue, improved scheduler productivity, optimal resource utilization and scheduling efficiency, improved patient and physician satisfaction, and enhanced physician loyalty. Through Unibased Systems’ Physician Access, part of the ForSite2020® application suite, your physicians are now connected and are able to conveniently request procedures to be scheduled or actually reserve the appointment date and time, without requiring entry into your hospital’s protected MPI and registration data. Accessible via the web, web-enabled via Citrix, from within the hospital network or as a link from the hospital web site, your physicians have the convenience and satisfaction of remotely viewing their complete schedules for the day as well as critical patient information related to each scheduled procedure to ensure patient safety and quality care. The unique approach from Unibased Systems provides access to the entire physician community that practices in or refers to your organization; thus making anytime, anywhere access to view and schedule appointments available to one of your most important customers.
Physician Access with Electronic Order Creation and Tracking
Just as with the other scheduling capabilities of the ForSite2020® application suite, the Physician Access portal allows complete enterprise scheduling, searching for available appointments across multiple facilities, sites or departments. Schedulers are also able to simultaneously create a legible physician order at the time of scheduling, automatically linking the order with the scheduled procedure. The order is created utilizing information provided in the scheduling process, is completely legible, and can be electronically signed by a user with proper authorization security rights. The signature can either take the form of the printed name of the physician or a replication of their actual signature, if previously captured by the organization during the setup process and chosen as the signature option. Either form of the signature is recognized as completely legal due to the use of a proper log-in name and password. Once the appointment is linked to the registration, the order is attached as well, automatically satisfying the open orders work queue and making the legible order immediately available to the department(s) performing the procedure(s).
Special Features for Surgery
Unibased Systems understands that your surgeon offices have very unique needs when it comes to scheduling and requesting appointments, and require unique elements of physician portal in order for it to work and provide the optimum ease-of-use and patient safety. With this in mind, Unibased Systems has developed special features for surgeon offices’ physician access to support the scheduling or requesting of surgery procedures, such as unique fields to identify the side of the body of which the incision is to be made required for the surgical “time out” under the JCAHO standards for the Surgical Care Improvement Process (SCIP) as well as the type of anesthesia to be given during a procedure in order to secure the need for an anesthesiologist as a required resource when scheduling. An additional restriction is available for surgical-type appointments which limit the physician’s office selection to the block time for that physician, if previously allocated. For those organizations requiring more extensive information to be provided at the time of a schedule or request, Unibased Systems Physician Access provides the ability to capture extra data specific for surgery such as additional time requested, admission type, expected length of stay, the need for a chest x-ray, if blood is requested, the need for an EKG, and a free text special equipment comments section. Also provided is the ability to capture specific insurance information such as an insurance phone number, group number, policy number, guarantor name and relationship to the patient, guarantor phone number, and the requestor’s name and phone number.
Other Important Features and Benefits
Other features of Unibased Systems’ Physician Access module include:
View Appointments – From the physician office, the user has easy access to all the appointments not yet performed but previously created by that specific user. The current status of the appointment (cancelled, rescheduled or arrived) is displayed.
View Provider Schedules – Surgeons are considered providers in the ForSite2020® application suite. From the physician office side of the application it is possible to view all the future scheduled appointment for a specific provider.
Managed Care Rules – From the physician office it is also possible to enter pre-certification information as well as check medical necessity at the time of the schedule request or reservation.
Process Tracking – Auditing of past transactions are available through the process tracking feature from the physician office in order to get an historical view of which user created the request or appointment.
Attaching Documents – Just as in the ForSite2020® application suite, the user (either physician office staff or the scheduler) has the ability to attach documents. These documents may be scanned at the point of service or selected from a pre-existing file accessible by the user. When attaching a document, the document type is selected for ease of identification and retrieval.
Signing Orders – In those instances where the user is not authorized to sign orders, Physician Access also supports access by the physician or other user authorized to sign orders. Selection of the “Sign and Print Orders” icon opens the user to a listing of outstanding appointments for which the order is not yet signed. The user may then select individual appointments or check a box to select all for signature. An additional column is also available to follow the same process to print the orders.
Watch List and Alerts – This function enables the user to set parameters which will keep a watch on incoming requests or schedules from the physician access module. The settings include activation of the watch and alert function, the frequency with which the system monitors activity which needs to be alerted, and the ability to provide a visual alert, audible alert, or both. Once set, the system automatically alerts the user that an action needs to be taken on a physician schedule or request.
Reprint Reminder Notices – Because offices often have the need to reprint reminder notices for the patient, this function is enabled on the action window for ease of access.
Statistical Reporting – A report, known as “Physician Access Statistics”, enables the tracking and reporting of statistics related to physician office activities. The report provides a count by the Physician Access scheduler and physician office of the number of requests and appointments being made, showing a month and year-to-date count by department, and totaling all activities across departments.
Mini MPI – To speed the scheduling process at the physician office, the Physician Access module retains a listing of patients who have been previously scheduled through the portal at the physician office. Selection of a patient from this list will automatically default the most recent demographic (SSN, name, address, DOB and sex) and insurance company information into the scheduling (or requesting) window, eliminating duplicate entry. All defaulted fields may be reviewed and modified, should the information change since the last patient visit.
Multiple Insurance Companies – The physician office has the ability to select multiple insurance company coverage for the patient. The application will capture and display these multiple insurance companies and order them according to primary, secondary, etc.
