All parents have experienced the pain of filling out form after form in the pediatrician's office – usually while trying to comfort their sick child or keep an eye on their other children. Pediatricians and their staff watch families with older children struggle with important questionnaires or worse, rush through them or omit information that their doctor might need.
Here's how it goes: A frazzled mom comes in with multiple children and has to find her insurance card and ID, is then handed a pile of papers on a clipboard that she has to try to fill out while wrangling her kids. Then she packs up and heads into an exam room with her crew while juggling partially completed forms.
Who is it in the family who has diabetes? Can my child stack three blocks in a tower or put a raisin in a cup? (It is here when the children start to want mom's attention and distract her every chance they get.) Which emergency contact should I use? OMG, here comes the doctor…
The doctor walks in and mom is frantically trying to complete the forms, so she can't focus on the discussion with the doctor, those mentally prepared questions went out the door. The doctor tries to address the most important issues realizing that this well-child visit may be the only time the child sees his or her primary care provider this year. The doctor asks the family to finish the forms at home.
The busy mom leaves the office and must mail the forms back to the doctor, which only happens a small percentage of the time. If all goes well, the results are fine and the doctor reviews them and updates the chart (ugh), but if not, then the follow-up process starts (super-long ugh).
I think to myself, it shouldn't be this way. Then I learned about what one Allscripts practice is doing.
How one clinic increased practice efficiency with CHADIS
The Children's Clinic (Anchorage, Alaska, U.S.A.) uses CHADIS to maximize the time patients and providers spend together during an office visit. Since implementing CHADIS five years ago, The Children's Clinic enables patients to complete questionnaires electronically before their appointments. The practice can use a wide variety of questionnaires – such as the ASQ-3™, M-CHAT-R™, Vanderbilt Assessment Scales and others.
Because the clinic has recently integrated CHADIS with Allscripts Professional EHR™, the app can automatically return results to patient carts. “We find it is fairly seamless now,” Practice Manager Grace Stout said. “[This is a] significant savings of work and time.”
CHADIS helps The Children's Clinic meet guidelines and increase income. And there has been an excellent return on investment; The Children's Clinic's annual reimbursement revenue from four common questionnaires is more than eight times the organization's investment in CHADIS.
As a pediatrician, I know this platform will transform how children are cared for and how parents interact with their providers. To learn more, check out The Children's Clinic's success story, our podcast Empowering Patients Through Tech or visit our website for more resources focused on the patient experience.
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