Top Trends Radiology Practice Managers Must Know for 2021

Are you ready for what’s ahead in 2021? If you’re a radiology practice manager looking to hit the ground running in the New Year, there are a few important trends you should be aware of first. These have emerged due a combination of the dire need for more flexible RIS systems and technologist workflows spurred by the global pandemic and rapidly enhancing healthcare technology capabilities. To remain relevant and competitive, your imaging center must evolve within these key areas. Together, we can ensure the New Year is a successful one!

The contactless transactions trend is a big one for 2021. Advancements in online registration, check-ins via bi-directional text messaging, and mobile e-forms are critical for patient safety and practice efficiency. This not only reduces practice frustrations like no shows, cancellations, and packed waiting rooms, but also improves the patient experience. By moving to contactless check-ins, leveraging comprehensive patient portals, and implementing revolutionary patient engagement solutions, patient satisfaction will undoubtedly increase. With this model, patients will no longer have to enter offices to fill out forms and physically sign in. They will receive timely notifications and payment estimations directly. Plus, through an integrated billing and payment system, patients can greatly benefit from pricing transparency and the ability to pay for all services ahead of time. Credit cards and check payments never have to physically change hands at a front desk.

Outdated manual processes and hardcopy paperwork significantly hinder the ability to smoothly and seamlessly run your operations. From registration to maintaining physical records, receiving and sending manual faxes leads to many erroneous or misplaced records and takes up a lot of physical office space. For 2021, it’s out with the old and in with the digital. Break the reliance on manual, unproductive processes and convert your imaging center into an efficiency powerhouse.

 

Optimize your registration workflows, reduce errors, and improve your overall operations with paperless, all-digital solutions from AbbaDox. Say goodbye to busy signals and hello to seamless integration. With AbbaDox, you can digitally receive, sort, or return documents and faxes without ever having to print a page or wait for a busy signal. Reduce document management bottlenecks with automated intake forms and digital patient records that automatically populate into the scheduler, patient record, and appointment detail workflows within the RIS.

The cloud-based technology trend is pushing full steam ahead in the healthcare industry in 2021 for a number of reasons. Perhaps most pressing is the need to create safer work environments by minimizing the number of staff members in a facility at a given time. Having a flexible, easily accessible administrative and scheduling system that can be used to its full capacity from any physical location or device is no longer a want, it’s a need. With a true cloud-based RIS system like AbbaDox, your practice will benefit from fully remote administrative capabilities without any interruption to operations. (In fact, it will actually enhance them.)

New artificial intelligence technology (AI) will be breaking barriers in the radiology market in the New Year. AI solutions will allow imaging centers to further automate patient registration and scheduling. AI-driven chatbots, for example, can virtually assist patients with a variety of tasks including scheduling appointments and providing important patient information in a humanized, natural way. Other AI solutions like Natural Language Processing (NLP) will enhance radiologist reporting, helping radiologists increase and improve accuracy. This advanced technology will also help extract meaningful information such as critical and incidental findings and follow-up recommendations, which can be easily shared with referring physicians. This will help imaging centers and hospital systems improve care coordination between providers, referring physicians, and patients.

In the New Year, radiology practice managers should take advantage of the advancements in cloud technologies to optimize their operational efficiencies and align with these trends. From contactless check-ins to artificial intelligence, these concepts will make noise across the industry next year and beyond.

Sign up for a demo below to learn how AbbaDox can help your radiology practice stay ahead of these trends and achieve its goals for 2021!