How frustrating is going to the doctor’s office and having to fill out your intake forms on paper while you can use Facebook’s OAuth to sign up for a checking account? Many large hospital systems that have advanced electronic health records still use paper intake forms. Imagine having the ability to fill out your patient intake forms the night before and send them to you provider electronically and securely. DocuSign, winner of 2014 Best Productivity App, streamlines the patient onboarding process by eliminating paper forms, which are not only burdensome but also inefficient and prone to error. DocuSign was a supporting sponsor at this years’ Forbes Healthcare Summit so I got the chance to see a demonstration of the product. DocuSign has a modern UI and does not allow the patient to submit a form until it is complete, which creates a more complete patient profile. This process also saves time for nurses or reception staff who would otherwise have to return the form to the patient to complete.
This is an ideal opportunity for a Digital Transaction Management tool like DocuSign, which supports high profile customers such as the Hospital Corporation of America, Mayo Clinic and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Some healthcare clients have integrated DocuSign into their patient workflow allowing the intake information to flow seamlessly into the hospital’s practice management system. In fact, DocuSign is partnered with Surescripts, whose patient onboarding product integrates DocuSign into patient intake workflows. An all-encompassing Digital Transaction Management solution, DocuSign also integrates with Salesforce and offers an open API that can be integrated into any website, app or system and facilitates HIPAA compliance, with anti-tampering controls which ensure the integrity of patient documents.
Health insurance providers and customers can also find DocuSign use cases for health plans in member enrollment and agent/broker onboarding processes. Similar to patient intake forms, health plan member enrollment forms are sometimes illegible and can be typed into a computer system incorrectly. The paper process can make signing up for a health plan an arduous, drawn out task. I have dealt with this first hand: one health plan that I signed up for took around a month to process my application, which meant I could not see a provider for a month because my information was not in the system. Even after my information was in the system, there were errors in my patient profile that changed the cost of my medications, causing an even larger headache. I am confident that the use of an electronic onboarding process reduces many of these types of issues.
Paper-based insurance claims processing is a nuisance for hospital employees because of frequently returned, incomplete or inaccurate information. Bypassing the headache and time waste, electronic processing allows for a quicker flow of information.
Digital Transaction Management will turn the healthcare industry into a well-oiled force that links patients to better care and employees to fewer operational burdens. With leading industry players, such as Wellmark and United Health Group, DocuSign is helping healthcare organizations make the digital transformation and return to its roots: caring for patients.
Below is an example of a DocuSign patient intake form, the fields outlined in red are required
