Many practices are investing in expensive EMR systems while overlooking simpler ways of lowering costs and increasing efficiencies. According to Jay Crawford, MD, pediatric and adolescent specialist at Knoxville Orthopaedic Clinic, optimizing patient scheduling is one of many simple improvements that could maximize practice revenue. Crawford has developed a new mobile app and cloud-based solution that helps redirect patients who don’t need to be seen by an orthopaedic surgeon, increases brandawareness for a private practice, and drives efficiencies.
Dr. Crawford’s custom mobile app, NextDocVisit.com, helps increase revenue per patient by identifying patients whose level of injury does not warrant a visit to an orthopaedic surgeon. Patients benefit also because after entering their information through the app, they get a message letting them know when they can expect a call back. Dr. Crawford estimates this type of system can weed out low-revenuepatients and potentially increase revenues by 1 to 2%. Dr. Crawford is currently building custom scheduling apps for two other practices. He concludes, “Changes coming to our industry are so significant that you must change how you do business in order to survive. That’s a hard thing to make people understand.”