The urgent care market is booming. There’s a steady increase in demand for convenient healthcare, and as result more patients are turning to urgent care clinics (UCCs) for their needs. With an increasing demand for care, it’s important for UCCs to operate efficiently to meet the needs of their patients and stay competitive.

Taking a look at your electronic health record (EHR) is a simple step in understanding how to optimize efficiency in your urgent care clinic. Does your EHR possess a simple and intuitive workflow? Above all, your EHR should support care delivery, not hinder the process. In addition, your EHR can help you uncover inefficiencies within your clinic and how to improve them. Here are five EHR features every urgent care clinic can leverage to improve efficiency:

1. Patient Kiosk

A strong check in process is vital to running a successful urgent care clinic. Patient kiosk is a great tool for urgent care clinics and patients, ensuring efficient and streamlined check in processes as well as an improved patient experience. Instead of filling out paperwork upon arrival, patients can enjoy a self-service check in system to provide important information, like demographics, family history and more. All of the information collected is integrated into the EHR and readily available for the physician’s review. The kiosk eliminates the need for paper forms and inefficiencies that come with it, improving check in processes that result in benefits for patients, physicians and staff.

2. Electronic ID Scanning

Electronic ID scanning is another great EHR feature that improves the patient check in process, by capturing insurance and driver's license information quickly and accurately. A patient’s card is placed in the scanner for front and back extraction of information. The collected data is then integrated into the EHR, eliminating the need for multiple data entries and potential errors that impact efficiency in UCCs.

3. Document Management

An organized EHR is vital to running an urgent care clinic like a well-oiled machine. Your EHR should provide comprehensive document management capabilities to help you keep patient files secure, organized and easily accessible. A good EHR will have a simple document management system designed to make it easy for healthcare providers to find the information they need, at the right time. Unlimited cloud storage as well as the ability to integrate and extract scans, faxes and other paper work electronically will help save your clinic valuable time and money.

4. E-Prescribing

Given the competitive nature of the urgent care market, it is highly important for the entire patient visit to run as smoothly as possible, including prescribing medications. With electronic prescribing (e-prescribing), physicians can prescribe and send a prescription from within their EHR, maximizing efficiency, security and patient safety. E-prescribing also makes it easier for patients to receive their medications, improving the patient experience and medication adherence.

5. Integrated Billing

An integrated billing system is essential to optimizing your urgent care clinic and your bottom line. A good billing system should: automate administrative and claim management tasks; simplify insurance verification and eligibility checks; allow you to bill directly from your EHR. A billing system including all of these features will promote better billing processes, allowing UCCs to get reimbursed accurately and quickly for the care provided.

An EHR is a helpful and powerful tool. See how you can leverage an EHR with these features to optimize efficiency in your urgent care clinic.