A Healthy Doctor - Patient Relationship Is Vital for Better HealthCare Outcomes

A Healthy Doctor - Patient Relationship Is Vital for Better HealthCare Outcomes

Time is vital to work on improving providerpatient relationship. You can save time spent on documentation with expert medical transcription services.

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A good physician-patient relationship can go a long way in helping patients stay healthy and receive the best patient care. Communication, respect and trust are the key factors of a good doctor patient relationship. Interviewing the patient, processing their concerns and talking them through evaluation are the important aspects of a physician’s communicative role. The prime requirement here is time; quality time the physician can spend with the patient. The arrival of EHR or electronic health records, despite its many benefits, put doctors in a difficult situation taking away the valuable time they can spend with their patients. This is because with the EHR system, physicians are forced to spend more time on the computer capturing patient’s medical information rather than focusing on patients. Physicians also tend to miss out opportunities to engage with patients while using the EHR. A practical way to save time spent on documentation is to hire expert medical transcription services.

Studies show that physicians spend one third of their time in the exam room looking at computer screens. A study conducted by the University of South Carolina found that primary care doctors cut their patients off just 12 seconds after entering the examination room. Some other studies have shown that the average doctor visit last just 13 to 16 minutes, during which the patient gets an average of 23 seconds to speak. Physicians are a vital element in a healthcare setup and they have to focus on spending more time with their patients and improving their relationship with them. Improving patient flow and reducing patient waiting period are essential for increasing the efficiency of your healthcare organization.

Now the Patients Are Listening The New York Times in one of its August 2017 issues carried the story of Dr. James Ryan a family practitioner in Ludington, Michigan, who routinely records appointments with the consent of his patients, and then uploads the audio to a secure web platform so that the patients can listen whenever they need to recall what they discussed. They can give family members access to the recordings as well.

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This system of recording consultations will benefit patients, especially older patients with a number of medical issues such as gout, high blood pressure, hypothyroidism, anxiety and depression and so on.

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In case of any doubt regarding the prescription or medication, they can turn to the recording for clarification. Dr Ryan says that “at some point this will become a normal thing, recording these encounters.”

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Doctors may use complex medical terminology during the consultation, which patients often find difficult to recall. In such cases, a recording will prove invaluable.

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In most U.S. states, consultations are allowed to be recorded. Under wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, 11 states (California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington) require the consent of all parties. In these states you need the physician’s consent to record. In 39 states and the District of Columbia, the law requires only one party’s consent. The HIPAA also does not forbid recording by patients, who are not “covered entities” under the Act. Most patients do listen to the recordings, and share those with their caregivers. This has a positive impact on patient care since with the recording it is easy to retain and understand information. Sometimes, patients record the consultation clandestinely, which is not advisable.

Video Recordings May Be More Effective At the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Dr. Randall Porter, a neurosurgeon prefers video. He uses plastic models of the brain and spine during office visits and shows patients their MRI scans. With their consent, he records the session on an iPad, then offer them the video to watch later on a web platform he founded called Medical Memory. According to him, without recordings patients forget 80 percent of what was said by the doctors by the time they reached the parking lot. In his survey of 333 patients, about half said they watched their videos more than once and two-third shared it with others. Most patients said it helped them remember details and feel more at ease with their condition. Dr. Porter also mentions how the use of the system reduced the institute’s malpractice insurance costs in half. More than 400 doctors have signed on to use Medical Memory since 2015, and 28,000 visits have been recorded.

A good doctor-patient relationship is vital to enhance community health initiatives and ensure healthy people. Measures such as making a recording of the consultation available to the patient could go a long way in strengthening the bond between the physician and patient.

www.medicaltranscriptionservicecompany.com

(800) 670 2809