Good Relationship between Doctors and Patients Vital for Better Care

Good Relationship between Doctors and Patients Vital for Better Care One of the best ways for doctors to balance data entry needs, communicate with patients, and provide optimum patient care is by opting for EHR-integrated medical transcription services.

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A common complaint among patients is that they are not able to communicate with physicians comfortably. With the advent of the electronic health record system, physicians are forced to spend valuable hours before their computer for medical documentation. This affects the performance of the physicians as they are not able to focus completely on the patients and maintain eye-to-eye contact with them.

Traditionally, physicians have been making use of the service of medical transcription companies to get their dictated medical notes transcribed within the required time. This enabled them to maintain a personal conversation with their patients and build a robust relationship with them. This relationship is very important because without it, what difference is there between a doctor – patient relationship and a service provider – customer relationship? To ensure patient and physician satisfaction, it is therefore crucial to restore the warmth of the doctor-patient relationship.

Why Are Patients Resentful?

Doctors constitute a highly admired and respected profession in the United States and on a global level. But many patients harbor resentment against their physicians. Many of them feel that their own physicians don’t spend as much as time with them as they would like or are more interested in making money than providing appropriate care.

Besides, many patients have an idealized notion of what a doctor should be. Patients want trust, friendliness, respect, honesty, timeliness and sincerity from the doctors.

When doctors fail to meet patients’ expectations, everything goes downhill. John Joseph Shigo MD, a Family

Medicine practitioner

medscape.com article) that patients

in Kensington, Maryland points out (in a

love doctors

when doctors

make the

right

medical decisions but hate them if any complications occur. The truth is that patients expect too much from their doctors. They have an exaggerated idea about the actual extent of medical knowledge, the availability and efficacy of medical tests, and related things. Patients tend to trust and love their own doctors and distrust others who may be involved in the care team. It is the relationship that determines the patient’s overall impression regarding the physician. What matters to majority of the patients is that their doctor should listen to them. This “listening” is being compromised by the EHR in most cases.

Now, the internet also has a major part to play in changing the doctor-patient relationship. Since medical information is available to patients on the internet, what they are looking for now is for their doctor to sort through all the information available and personalize it for their particular circumstance or requirement. In other words, they have considerable medical information available to them, and have numerous questions regarding their healthcare for which they demand answers. Only if there is a good

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partnership between the patient and the doctor, doctors can get to know their patients, and their specific requirements. The physician’s prescriptions will make sense to the patient only if there is a warm and understanding relationship between the two. When a patient trusts his/her doctor and communicates well with the doctor, the outcomes are considerably better, patient satisfaction is better, and costs are less.

Building Trust among Patients How can physicians build trust among their patients? This requires uninterrupted time with the patient. Time is a major problem for many physicians, and this is something the physicians themselves need to sort out. Doctor visits are often hurried and patients hardly get 15- 20 minutes with the physician, which means that each and every second counts and must be used wisely. While 15 to 20 minutes may be sufficient for a general health check-up, for people dealing with chronic conditions this time may be limited. If the doctor is engaged in some other task such as reading a chart or spending time on the computer entering patient data, the patient may feel that the physician is not listening. This can lead to poor consultation experience and inefficient patient care, which must be avoided at all costs.

Good communication with the patients is therapeutic and the patient’s perception of the quality of the healthcare depends on the interactions with the physician. With good communication

patients

can

ultimately

improve

their

health

mediated

through

participation in their care and adherence to treatment. Data entry requirements could get in the way of smooth communication and this is what physicians can try to avoid. A reliable provider of medical transcription services can help reduce the administrative burden on physicians and free up valuable time. Alternately, doctors can choose to use the services of a scribe who can be along with the doctor, recording the doctor’s notes as well as the patient’s concerns whether in a hospital room or in the private practice or any other healthcare setting. They can also be entrusted with updating the medical charts of patients, correcting errors, and clearing up red flags or alerts. With the EHR becoming mandatory, data collection and entry is of prime importance and has even surpassed patient care. One of the best ways for doctors to balance data entry needs and providing patient care is by opting for EHR-integrated medical transcription services. In this case, doctors can continue to dictate their notes and the transcription service can access the physician’s EHR system in real time or at any desired time, and complete all the required data fields promptly by listening to the dictations.

Doctors also have the option of using voice recognition-integrated EHR systems that allow them to narrate directly into the system. Voice recognition software can be frontend or back-end. A physician or nurse has to activate the front-end software, select the

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appropriate input fields when dictating notes, review the notes, and sign off the document. A back-end voice recognition software system depends on the software to convert speech directly into text without the oversight of the doctor who dictated the notes. The transcribed text is filtered through a template that captures the required clinical information. The transcript produced must be reviewed by a transcriptionist, and the document must also be finally signed off by the physician or other provider.

Whatever option physicians choose, the important consideration is how much time and effort can be saved. More time spent with patients translates to more effective communication, more efficient patient care, and excellent outcomes.

www.medicaltranscriptionservicecompany.com

918-221-7809