By Dr. Diana Rangaves, PharmD, RPh and Ryan Haddock
With the never-ending invention of new drugs and the emergence of pharmacogenomics, pharmacists are currently recognized as a critical part of the healthcare team. As the pharmacy transformation movement picks up steam, as evidenced by the profession’s central role during the COVID-19 pandemic, pharmacists now do much more than just dispense prescribed drugs. Indeed, an increasing number of pharmacists are taking on new roles on the front line of public health efforts, such as COVID-19 vaccine administration.
Like most healthcare professionals, pharmacists across the healthcare spectrum face various technical challenges as they strive to offer efficient patient care. As pharmacists become more actively involved in patient care, they need a system to store data and support the functionality to organize and maintain patient records. Here are the software solutions you need for your pharmacy’s evolving clinical practice.
Care Documentation (eCare Plan) Software
As a pharmacist, you can do much more for your patient’s health and overall well-being. This is true if you are clinically trained to offer an array of enhanced healthcare services to help manage patients’ health conditions and improve their health outcomes. Some of these services may include performing medication therapy management, identifying various social determinants of health, monitoring vital symptoms, tracking progress via lab results, setting care goals, patient education, and more.
A reliable eCare Plan empowers pharmacists to document all patient interactions and send them electronically to payers for timely reimbursement. Nurses have used eCare plans to document and outline the entire patient care journey.
Fortunately, most pharmacy software vendors are incorporating eCare plans into their systems, making it easier for pharmacists to document their services within their clinical practices’ workflow. Remember, eCare plans improve workflow with efficient documentation, which can improve your patient health outcomes. These plans can also provide transparency with your patients’ primary care provider and ensure proper reimbursement.
Scheduling Software
Manual scheduling can be a burdensome and time-consuming task in a pharmacy setting. It’s not uncommon for patient scheduling to take up a considerable portion of your time – time you could undoubtedly spend with your patients. Manual scheduling is also inefficient and can result in missed appointments, improper patient care, and other related errors in a pharmacy setting.
Keep in mind that when starting, your clinical hours will likely be limited, and you won’t have the capacity to see walk-in patients daily. Scheduling enables you to fit clinical services into your drug dispensing workflow until your clinical business grows enough to switch those priorities. An effective scheduling system should allow you to set timely reminders so that you never miss an important event or appointment.
This way your pharmacy environment will present even more capabilities to positively influence patient care, improving patient health outcomes and retention.
Medical Billing Software
Modern medical billing software for pharmacies ensures you are getting paid for the care you provide. Billing the medical benefit of your patients’ health plans can be a complicated and time-consuming process. This is time that would be better spent with your patients.
Automating your medical billing helps you in two specific ways. First, it all but eliminates the costly (both financially and otherwise) errors that can happen with a manual billing process. Second, it helps you scale your pharmacy. With more time to dedicate to patient care and less time ensuring you’re getting paid for it, you can afford to expand your clinical offerings and grow your revenue stream.
Amplicare Clinical Solution – your chance to improve your patients’ clinical outcomes
Your patients look to you for expert guidance in making the right health-related choices. What if you could use software to easily identify opportunities to consult with your patients and improve overall clinical outcomes? That’s just one of the many things Amplicare® Clinical Solution by EnlivenHealth® can do.
Amplicare Clinical Solution analyzes your patient medication data to identify possible intervention opportunities, improving both your patients’ health and your pharmacy’s profitability. It also provides an appointment scheduler, a clinical documentation platform, medication therapy management, and much more — all in one integrated solution.
Wrap-Up
Here’s the bottom line: Operating a clinical practice without software to support it isn’t sustainable, much less scalable. And when you’re developing your clinical practice, you need a proven clinical management solution that, at the very least, enables you to schedule, document, and bill for the care you provide. But you shouldn’t stop there. With software like Amplicare Clinical Solution, you can give your pharmacy a competitive edge over others in the industry. And that will help your pharmacy to continue to grow and thrive in this new era of digital-driven healthcare.