Just What the Doctor Ordered: How Document Generation Technology Can Improve Patient Care

Summary: Doctors across the globe are seeking a cure for administrative overload and burnout. Document generation technology can reduce time spent on paperwork by automating repetitive tasks while maintaining exceptional documentation accuracy, level of detail, and data privacy. This enables physicians to spend more time with patients and quickly access records needed to provide effective care.

In a medical setting, every second counts. But millions of doctors across the world are often required to spend those precious seconds (and minutes, and hours) on paperwork instead of patient care. Currently, physicians in Canada spend an estimated 18.5 million hours per year on administrative work – roughly the equivalent of 55.6 million patient visits.

Spending up to 38% of a work week on documentation and administration adds to an already heavy workload and contributes to physician burnout, which can negatively impact patient care. However, detailed and complete documents – like health records – are also critical for accurate patient diagnosis, treatment, billing, and more.

To solve this paperwork paradox, many healthcare facilities are turning to document generation technology. Automated document generation solutions like those offered by Apryse can help reduce the amount of time doctors spend on paperwork while improving document accuracy, completeness, detail, and level of data privacy. This helps make sure patient care measures get a clean bill of health.

In its simplest form, document generation is the process of automatically creating documents based on different templates and predefined data. Tools like the Apryse SDK (Software Development Kit) make this process efficient, fast, intuitive, and scalable.

Choosing the right document generation tool often depends on the complexity of documentation and templates needed. For example, if you’re looking to generate simple and repetitive documents like invoices, you can use Apryse WebViewer to do that right in a web browser.

Watch the video to learn how WebViewer works:

To try WebViewer’s document generation capabilities, check out the demo.

Or, if you need to generate a high volume of documents and templates with complex logic, Fluent by Apryse enables developers to rapidly create, manage, and deliver well-formatted reports.

Healthcare facilities can use document generation tools like these to quickly produce a wide range of commonly used documents, including:

Let’s look at some of the areas in healthcare that can benefit from automated document generation, and how it helps improve patient care.

Great patient care involves everyone at a healthcare facility, from physicians to administrative professionals. Here are a few ways document generation technology can help.

In an emergency, quickly establishing the who, what, where, when, and why is crucial. This makes effective intake, consent, and admissions documents extremely valuable. Automating generation of these documents significantly reduces processing time and enables faster consent so patients can be seen (and treated) sooner. It also ensures essential information is quickly communicated to doctors and other healthcare professionals, so they’re armed with all the right information to effectively address health issues.

Learn how Recover Health partnered with Apryse to reduce turnaround on admission forms from 48 hours to seconds. Read the case study.

When a medical emergency happens, the last thing a patient wants to worry about is who’s picking up the bill. Errors in insurance documents due to manual processing can lead to insurance coverage and claim payout disputes.

In addition, invoicing and bill coding errors can cause delays and inaccurate payments, which can cost both the patient and facilities significant sums. For example, the US healthcare system loses approximately $935 million per week due to medical billing mistakes. Many of these are preventable.

Automated document generation technology greatly reduces the chance of human-caused errors in insurance forms and billing. This makes it much less likely that a patient will receive a surprise six-figure bill in the mail during their recovery. And ensures that healthcare facilities aren’t losing money to billing inaccuracies that could be invested in improving patient care.

Maintaining the flow of patient information is vital for proper medical treatment. Communication is key, but so is compliance. Here’s a look at how document generation technology can help facilitate data accessibility while ensuring security and privacy.

Moving from paper medical records to electronic health records (EHR) gives physicians and other healthcare professionals better access to a wealth of patient data. EHRs centralize and organize details like medical history, prescription medications, surgical records, progress reports, and much more into an accessible database of patient info.

Errors in any aspect of EHRs can be life-threatening, leading to misdiagnosis or incorrect treatment. One survey found that at least half of EHRs may contain a mistake. Misinterpretations and mistakes are particularly likely to happen when a patient is transferred from one physician to another. (Think of an incredibly high-stakes game of Telephone.) Automated document generation helps prevent errors at this critical juncture, and throughout the entire treatment process, by accurately populating EHRs. This ensures that everyone in the communication chain has access to precise and up to date patient data.

Generating accurate patient records is one thing. Making sure that data is secure is another. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the US protects sensitive patient health information from being disclosed without the patient’s consent or knowledge. Automated document generation reduces the likelihood of security weaknesses caused by manual processes, which helps healthcare providers remain compliant and prevent data breaches.

HIPAA also states that individuals have the right to access their own health records at any time. Over 61 million people in the US live with a disability, so making documentation accessible isn’t a courtesy – it’s essential. Apryse solutions follow the latest guidelines for PDF/UA document generation to improve accessibility for people who use assistive technology to access content, including health records.

Compliance violations and data breaches can result in hefty costs and fines. Using secure and accessible document processing solutions to prevent this ensures those funds are available for improvements to patient care.

To learn how Apryse SDKs can help in areas beyond document generation, check out our solutions for healthcare.

When it comes to solving the problem of how to spend more time with patients, document generation technology is much more than just a bandage – it’s a fast, reliable, secure, and compliant long-term solution.

If you’d like to use document generation capabilities to speed up paperwork processing at your healthcare facility, start a 30-day trial today. If you’ve got any questions or would like more information, feel free to get in touch with our team.