5 Benefits to Outsourcing Medical Record Requests

Discover how outsourcing medical record requests can alleviate common pain points in your healthcare practice. This article explores five key benefits, including reducing phone calls, minimizing compliance risks, protecting patient data, and enhancing patient satisfaction.

 

Do you or your staff run into this scenario daily?

Medical Record Requestor: “Hi, I’m calling again to check when I can receive the medical records for Karen Smith that we requested 1 week ago.”

Provider Staff: “As I mentioned to the person who called me yesterday and the day before, we are waiting for the attorney’s office to send payment prior to releasing Karen’s medical records.”

Sound familiar? Your office is not alone.

Office Managers have shared that dealing with phone calls tied to medical record requests is one of their largest pain points. And guess what, these calls come at the worst time when you are checking in patients, during clinicals or in the middle of daily tasks that keep the practice running smoothly. Not to mention that medical record requestors, like law offices, hire 3rd party call centers that call you daily asking about medical record status when we are waiting for the action item on their side to move forward.  

5 Benefits to Outsourcing Medical Record Requests 

1. Reduce Phone Calls: The #1 pain point when talking to office managers is the number of phone calls their staff manages when it comes to medical record requests. Requestors are now hiring international 3rd party callers to check in daily on status when the provider is waiting for information or payment from the requestor.    

2. Generational Trends: The need for personal healthcare data is increasing year over year. Younger generations are more proactive about their health and need to obtain their medical records annually. This is putting more administrative burden on medical staff which prohibits them from day-to-day operations of their practice. 

3. Reduce Compliance Risk: 53% of healthcare data breaches are caused by staff negligence. This is understandable given the multi-tasking required to operate a medical practice. Help remove this heavy burden from your staff and enable them to care for patients.  

4. Protecting Patient Data: Many medical record requests are tied to Point of Care (PoC) which means your staff will need to review the entire medical record and remove duplicates to find the specific information that is being requested. Often, it is difficult to ensure you are only sharing the patient information required and nothing more. This is a huge responsibility put on your staff to execute with precision.  

5. Patient Satisfaction: Medical Records are being requested for a purpose and typically it’s an urgent need. Patients often get frustrated with your practice due to Turn Around Time (TAT). Your staff gets busy, calls in sick or takes vacation which causes a delay and medical record requests start to pile up. I think we all agree this is not an enjoyable task and most people like to push off doing this work until it’s absolutely required.  

Industry Standard Compliance

Every step of the way, Provider1st ensures our processes are met with industry compliance standards your practice and patients expect with their data.