Patient Intake EMR Software

Buyers Guide

Last updated: October 03, 2023

Healthcare organizations have a lot of pressure to provide a great patient experience, increase efficiency, navigate challenges, and enhance quality. Patient intake EMR software is the perfect tool for any medical practice to drive success across all areas by eliminating redundant processes, offering a customer-focused experience, and boosting profitability.

Here’s what we’ll be discussing in this buyer’s guide:

What is a Patient Intake EMR Software?

Patient Intake EMR Software Features

Choosing a Patient Intake EMR Vendor

Patient Intake EMR Software Benefits

What is a Patient Intake EMR Software?

No one wants to be kept waiting before their appointment or lab tests, etc. Practices that normalize a long waiting period negatively affect their patient experience with the treatment. This is where your Patient Intake Software comes in handy. It allows medical practices to reduce their wait times and improve patient satisfaction.

The main purpose of patient intake software is to allow patients to complete their check-in process online in the comfort of their homes rather than coming to the clinic to book an appointment.

In short, this software eradicates the need of filling out lengthy patient forms in waiting rooms and printing out chunks of intake forms from the website. In this way, it not only reduces the waiting period for your patients but also saves you unnecessary costs of printing.

In addition to this, manually filling out your forms brings loads of problems on your practice’s end as well. For example, illegible handwriting can cause issues with the issuance companies and makes the verification of documents very difficult. Thus, checking in through the patient intake EMR allows physicians and patients to save valuable time and verify details efficiently.

Here, I’ll be going over the various features of a patient intake EHR along with the requirements of selecting your EHR vendor for your practice.

Before jumping to an EHR software, you must assess the needs, requirements, and capabilities of your practice. After all, a patient intake EHR/EMR software comes in all shapes and sizes. Some practices might require EMR software for large practices based on their size, while others might need small-scale ones.

Here’s all you need to know to make the most of your patient intake EHR software.

Patient Intake EMR Software Features

Here are some features of patient intake EHR software that help improve patient care, streamline your clinical workflows, and simplify administrative tasks.

Real-Time Dashboard – A patient intake EHR/EMR software should also offer a user-friendly and interactive dashboard that you can customize to show all the important information you need in a single place.

HIPAA Compliance - A patient intake EHR software also needs to ensure patient information confidentiality and privacy through compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) guidelines.

Online Digital Forms - Online digital forms allow patients to fill out their personal and medical information and submit it before coming for their appointment via the EMR software. In this way, their details are processes in advance, thus reducing the waiting period of patients.

Templates and Customizations - The patient intake EMR needs to include built-in templates for intake forms. Medical practitioners should be able to view, edit, and customize these forms according to the needs of their patients.

Feedback Forms - Feedback forms allow practitioners to gather feedback from the patients in order to improve their practice. It allows you to identify where your practice lacks and how to improve the patient experience.

Reports - Your patient intake EMR should be able to present your data visually - in the form of charts and tables - from all the information taken through surveys and feedback forms.

Insurance Validation - In order to avoid payment issues in the future, the software should be able to verify payments and benefits before the patient’s appointment with the physicians.

Message Portal - A secure and encrypted message portal allows patients and physicians to address their queries, give important reminders, and simply improve their communication.

Choosing a Patient Intake EMR Vendor

Now that we’ve discussed the necessary features of a patient intake EHR, let’s talk about some of the requirements you’d need from your EHR vendor. These may differ for each individual medical practice.

Vendor Size – What type of practices does your EHR vendor typically cater to? Some EHR vendors only provide services to small-scale practices, while others cater to large-scale practices. Therefore, if you have a small practice, paying for services that help large practices, won’t do much good. Similarly, large practices won’t be able to function with services designed for small practices.

Design – The design of EHR’s infrastructure depends on your choice. Whether you would prefer a cloud-based, web-based, or even standalone EHR.

Web-based EHR: These companies focus on a web-based approach and practitioners can access their patient information through their web browser.

Stand-alone EHR: Although not quite popular as the others, this EHR is an on-premise EMR that can be accessed remotely through smartphones, iPads, etc. as long as you’re connected to your practice’s network.

Cloud-based EHR: Companies that provide native cloud EHR offer you access to patient information through a cloud-storage.

Certification – Vendor certification ensures patient information confidentiality and security and is perhaps one of the most important things to look for in a patient intake EHR vendor. So make sure your vendor has ONC-authorized testing and certification body (ONC-ATCB) certification.

According to the top reviews, most patient intake EMR software vendors focus on providing cloud-based healthcare IT services to enhance security and provide seamless services.

Patient Intake EMR Software Benefits

An effective EHR software helps streamline your clinical workflows, simplify administrative tasks, and help reduce cost. Here are some of the most advantageous benefits of patient intake EHR software.

• Seamless insurance claims management and denied claims.
• Ensure compliance with healthcare regulations.
• Ensure an accurate and simplified note-taking process.
• Improve clinical workflow efficiency.
• Improve administrative efficiency by simplifying processes.