Nowadays, digital intake forms are essential, especially in the healthcare sector. Patients increasingly expect a smooth arrival experience and there’s nothing more frustrating than being held up by having to fill out a form.
Since the pandemic, for obvious safety reasons, healthcare providers have also had to find ways to do away with congested waiting rooms.
Digital intake forms are helping to ease patient flow and reduce wait times. Patients can now complete necessary paperwork digitally prior to their visit from the comfort of their own homes.
Digital forms are now very much expected by consumers as part of an improved patient experience. For providers, there are many benefits too, including improved accuracy and more efficient workflow.
So, are your digital intake forms up to scratch? Are they meeting your organization’s and your patients’ needs?
Here are 6 ways you can improve your forms, and a reminder of the benefits.
1. Reinforce your brand
Your brand reflects your healthcare organization’s uniqueness. The more places you can reinforce that image to your patients, the more your logo and strapline will stick in minds.
It’s all about growing your brand identity and digital intake forms have an important part to play.
There’s another reason why your intake forms need to look good. A professionally branded form looks smart and shows you care about small details.
When it comes to health, patients need to feel reassured that you will take care of them with the same attention.
Your branding matters. It says everything about you and plays a critical role in building trust.
2. Bring in some personalization
Healthcare providers are under increasing pressure to offer a great digital experience. It starts with intake forms. Sending them via email or text personalizes the process and provides the opportunity to offer a warm welcome. Personalization improves engagement.
Evidence shows there is a good reason to do this – 88% of U.S. marketers reported seeing measurable improvements due to personalization.
People also get frustrated answering questions you already know the answers to. Where information has already been provided, details like name, email address and phone number (the patient’s profile), can be automatically inserted into follow-up forms.
Intelligent forms that are pre-filled with standard information save time.
3. Make sure your forms are mobile-friendly
People are now accustomed to accessing everything via a mobile app or it being mobile friendly. This applies to your digital intake forms too.
4. Customize using advanced form logic
Not all digital forms are created equally. Some are cumbersome to navigate and complete. When filling out an online form, there’s nothing more frustrating than trying to shoehorn relevant information in that doesn’t fit with the questions asked or working through questions that aren’t relevant.
Conditional logic can tie questions to previous answers. A question can be hidden or shown according to how the patient answered another question.
For example, if you ask, ‘Do you smoke’ and the patient answers yes, conditional logic returns further questions, such as ‘How long have you been a smoker?’
Using PatientTrak’s advanced form logic, patients will only see questions on the forms that are relevant to them, giving patients a better experience and reducing the number of calls from people asking for help with their form. It makes things easier for patients and for administrative staff.
Forms can also be customized according to the healthcare department or demographic. Cardiology patients would have a different form compared to those visiting the department of dietetics and nutrition.
For returning patients/revisit forms, conditional logic can also be used to check if personal information has changed, such as ‘Has your insurance provider changed?’
A professional form that is easy to understand and complete helps to increase engagement and compliance. And less people will turn up having to complete forms when they arrive, minimizing congestion and the workload of your arrivals team.
5. Automation
Waiting for patients to fill out forms is frustrating for physicians and patients and adds to wait times. Automating the process with digital intake forms avoids losing valuable time for everyone.
There’s no paperwork, scanning, remembering to bring it the appointment (patients), or searching for forms (staff and physicians).
Automating the onboarding process saves time for everyone, improves compliance (gentle automated reminders pre-appointment give patients a nudge) and ensures important information and signatures are collected prior to the appointment.
6. Ensure an efficient insurance verification process
Insurance verification is usually done directly with the payer. Implementing digital insurance verification via your intake forms enables patients to include an insurance document or upload a photo to ensure efficient collection of insurance information prior to any appointments.
This saves time and makes the billing process more efficient.
The benefits of digital intake forms
Online intake forms carry lots of benefits. They:
- Save time
- Prevent congestion in the waiting areas
- Cut costs
- Improve accuracy (no more illegible handwriting to decipher!)
- Protect patient privacy and make it easier to control who has access to patient data
- Enhance the patient experience
- Improve patient satisfaction
- Help with patient flow
- Enable the pre-validation of insurance information
- Allow physicians to prepare better for the appointment
- Improve workflow
The truth is patients prefer digital forms over paper and clipboards. They’re safer (in terms of infection risk), more secure, and add efficiency to the arrival process.
Why not digitize your intake forms today?
PatientTrak’s digital intake forms are easy to implement, give your patients an all-round better experience, and improve workflow.
Contact our experts to discuss your intake form needs today.
