Let’s say you have a medical issue. You need surgery for it, and your doctor directs you to a local surgery center. This is a place where your medical team can deal with the problem and get you back on your feet again.
@gpiron
These days, hospitals, clinics, surgery centers, etc., often have online software platforms you can use. They have various features to make your life easier.
As a patient, if you’re going to use one of these, you want it to be able to do some basic things. If it can’t, it’s not as simple and easy as the designers intended it to be.
Let’s look at surgery center software features for which patients often look.
Payment Services
When you look at surgery center software, payment services are one of the first things you’ll want to see. That’s because:
- Patients can use them to pay online quickly and easily
- You don’t have to call and speak to someone to pay your bill
If you’re coming off surgery, you don’t want to have to call the surgery center and navigate the phone options till you get to the person who can take your credit card number. Maybe they’ll put you on hold, or they’ll ask you irrelevant questions.
Online surgery center payment portals are a way you can pay your bill quickly, but it also saves the surgery center time and money. If they allow patients portal payment options, they don’t need as many operators standing by. They don’t need to pay for as many staff hours.
This reduces their overhead, and they can pass those savings on to the patients. The staff they do have can take care of other clerical work rather than taking credit card numbers and processing payments over the phone all day.
Doctor Messaging Services
Doctor messaging services are another surgery center software feature that patients frequently need. You might have to contact a doctor at some point. Maybe you need to do so because:
- You have a pre-surgery question
- You’re experiencing pain post-surgery, and you need to ask if they can prescribe you some pain meds
Doctors often have busy schedules. They have a million things to do, and they can’t always return phone messages.
It’s much easier if they can check their online portal messages throughout the day. They can type a quick response and send it to you. If they need to talk to you over the phone, they can call you, but often, they can use the software to answer your query, prescribe medication, etc.
Medication Prescription Services
Speaking of prescription options, patients frequently look for those as well. They want surgery center software through which a doctor can prescribe their meds, either before or after surgery.
Again, they don’t want to have to track the doctor down via phone calls. If you and a doctor are playing phone tag, it might take days before you get a response.
You can use the software to request a prescription, and they can send it to your pharmacy. You can have your pharmacy’s info in the portal, and you can confirm with no phone call necessary whether it’s ready for you to pick up.
If you’re hurting and need some pain meds, or whatever it might happen to be, this is a more efficient treatment methodology.
Doctor-Patient Visit Follow Up
You might meet with a doctor and talk to them about what’s going on with you. Maybe this is before your surgery or afterward.
The doctor takes notes on what they observe. They can enter those comments directly into the portal. The notes go on your chart so that the doctor can refer back to them, or other medical team members can see them.
If you want to see what the doctor said about your progress, symptoms, recovery, etc., you can find all that. You should have free access to your medical records and notes, and the best surgery center software should let you see all of it.
Referrals
One more thing a patient often wants from a surgery center software platform is a place where you can see and access a doctor referral. Maybe your primary doctor is sending you to see a specialist, and they wrote a referral.
You can see that in the portal, and you can easily print it out if you need to. You can then take that referral and show it to your new doctor or specialist if they ask for it.