Refining patient relationships takes a lot of work. The range of information patients bring to the clinic table is expansive, with some relying on questionable websites while others consume verifiable sources only.

Inevitably, your clinicians may face more resistance when prescribing a medication or procedure. This lack of trust drives some healthcare providers to double on patient education. 

Somehow, these medical professionals manage to miraculously tackle misinformation on top of a mounting workload or packed schedule. Their secret? These clinicians employ electronic medical records (EMRs) built to execute patient engagement tools. 

Let’s examine how fellow providers, administrators, and health IT professionals can close the deep trust gap through engagement-driven solutions. 

Good Care Starts with Good Tech

The Link Between EMRs and Patient Trust

Clinics that don’t utilize standard security measures can create a sense of unease and hesitation, and understandably so. Data breaches fuel people’s anxiety: “Physicians can protect them from illnesses, not cyber attacks.” 

Discussing security protocols and highlighting certifications to patients and their caregivers can provide relief. When patients know their data is protected, they can use a HIPAA-compliant portal (integrated with a certified EHR)—to update their information, check their lab work, and download their treatment plan without worries.      

Another critical point of poor patient experience is patient-friendly communication. From the patient’s perspective, an obstetrician or perinatologist telling her about “potential fetal demise” might not be as impactful because the patient is unsure about what it means. 

The phrase “the baby might not survive” can better communicate the risks. Plus, specialists can support these discussions with patient education materials (accessible via patient portals).

Using patient portal software to give your staff a break.  Patient engagement tools aren’t just for patients; they benefit your team, too. Features that allow patients to update their records and appointments reduce phone calls and data entry tasks. Now, they have more time to focus on improving patient experience!

Enhancing Patient Engagement with EMRs

Part of creating a connected care journey is encouraging patients to use the same digital health records clinics use. It offers another communication channel so patients and caregivers can engage offline, like joining remote monitoring programs for chronic care.

Easy Access to Medical Records 

Patient portals support individuals in managing their health and receiving follow-up care. Physicians must leverage digital templates to collect critical details during patient interactions and share them via the best patient portal system. 

Additionally, most patients tend to be more receptive to materials curated in such formats: 

• Interactive tools
• How-to videos
• Pamphlets
• Visual aids
• Printouts from portals

Appointment Scheduling & Reminders 

One of the best ways to drive patients away is not seeing them on their confirmed appointment. Such neglect can make them feel like they’ve been overlooked and trigger no-shows. 

Today’s portals have online appointment scheduling features that do a good job of addressing this problem. Practices can:

• Review the number of appointments to determine if walk-in slots are still available. 

• See patients who have not filled out forms or whose records are incomplete.

• Verify which patients need to bring their lab results to their visit. 

• Use the portal to send patients reminders about completing forms, updating records, and bringing lab work. 

On the patients’ side, they can enable alert features that allow the clinic’s software to automatically send text, email, or in-app messages when a doctor has to make last-minute scheduling adjustments. It also allows patients to quickly reschedule or send a reply explaining why rebooking may not be possible.

Telehealth Integration 

Complex medications or care routines are too complex for patients to follow diligently. They might find it discouraging as they might think they were prescribed a regimen that doesn’t fit their lifestyles. 

Online healthcare management that features virtual visits can resolve this hurdle. Through remote visits, specialists can apply engagement methods that promote clarity, including teach-back (encourages patients to re-tell the clinician’s explanations in their own words). 

By harnessing the advantages of telehealth integration, patients can make the most out of guided care.

How EMRs Improve Care Quality and Transparency

Care data that’s accessible, accurate, and organized helps raise the quality of care outcomes. Below are common case scenarios that showcase this standard: 

Streamlined Communication 

Secure messaging and updates can help reduce a person’s anxiety about a new procedure or medication. For instance, a surgery patient goes home with instructions to check signs of infection. 

Using the patient engagement platform, your clinician can send reminders and receive updates when the patient uploads photos of the surgical site. Your clinician can review the pictures and reassure the patient about his healing progress.

Shared Decision-Making 

Parents need access to their child’s asthma treatment plans to make informed choices. Your specialist uploads the young patient’s lung function test results and care plan into the portal. This practice helps parents see their child’s treatment progress besides learning to adjust inhaler use.  

Personalized Treatment Plans 

Personalized patient care with an EMR is expanding, with current systems enabling clinicians to generate data-driven insights for more effective care. 

Consider an internal medicine physician who uses data analytics to pinpoint patients who miss their medication frequently. This approach allows her to place these patients in a special group and enable portal features so they receive automated reminders and get a follow-up call from the care team when they have to take their prescriptions.

Security and Compliance: Keeping Patient Data Safe

Addressing patient concerns about data privacy requires some heavy lifting. Your clinic must contend against perceptions born from high-profile cases of clinicians making medical errors or miscommunications. 

It also bolstered the demand for transparency in how clinics collect and handle patient information. Health information experts urge clinics to:

• Start using EMRs that employ advanced encryption for server-based or transmitted data.

• Leverage multi-factor authentication for EMR users to restrict viewing or changing sensitive data to fewer team members. 

• Test backup systems so your clinic can still recover patient data in the event of data loss or cyberattacks.

Tech Points to Ponder: Boosting patients’ confidence in your practice’s data security feels more natural when clinicians trust their own patient engagement tools and the vendors they rely on.  To motivate your care team to reinforce data security measures, consider running quarterly or annual cybersecurity sessions with your trusted EMR partner. These events set the stage for clinicians and staff to ask tech partners about their efforts to ensure strong protection against breaches and other security threats.

Tap Into Our Expertise: Making Patient Engagement a Priority

Prioritizing patient engagement starts with easy-to-use patient portals and accessible electronic medical records. Beyond adding solutions to your trust kit, they offer patients a secure communication channel and allow your team to implement top-tier patient engagement strategies.

When patients are empowered, trust follows. Our experts are here to help you create stronger patient connections with the right EMR system and transparent data practice. Connect with our team to get started!

The waiting room is full; your front desk staff manages a steady stream of walk-ins and scheduled patients, and your healthcare providers move quickly between exam rooms. In urgent care, patients expect fast, efficient treatment, and any delay—whether in check-in, documentation, or prescriptions—can lead to frustration, longer wait times, and workflow disruptions.

In this high-pressure environment, an outdated electronic health record (EHR) system can be a major roadblock. Without the right urgent care EHR tools, inefficiencies pile up, slowing down operations and impacting patient care.

At EMR-EHR, we understand the challenges urgent care providers face. We’ve seen firsthand how legacy systems fall short and how the best EHRs for urgent care elevate patient experiences. In this blog, we’ll cover some of our observations in the industry and the must-have EHR tools for a high-performing clinic.

Fix Urgent Care Workflow Bottlenecks

Key Operational Challenges in Urgent Care Centers

Urgent care facilities face unique operational challenges that require tailored solutions:

• High patient volume – Clinics must efficiently manage a steady influx of patients, ensuring timely care without excessive wait times.
• Walk-ins and same-day appointments – A flexible urgent care EHR is needed to accommodate unpredictable patient arrivals while maintaining provider schedules.
• Insurance and billing complexity – Rapid verification of insurance, accurate coding, and streamlined claims processing are essential to prevent revenue losses.

Addressing these challenges requires an EHR designed to support urgent care workflows, providing the right tools to streamline both patient care and administrative processes.

Essential Urgent Care EHR Tools for Efficiency

To keep your clinic running smoothly and ensure a smooth patient journey, urgent care clinics like yours need EHR features that enhance speed and accuracy like:

1. Fast and Seamless Patient Check-In

Imagine your patients walking in, checking in directly on a tablet upon arrival—no paperwork, clipboard, or delays. That’s what modern EHR systems enable. Urgent care clinics see more walk-in patients than scheduled visits, making an efficient self check-in and patient flow system essential. Leading urgent care EHRs like IMS further streamlines check-ins with:

• Contactless check-in and online registration – Patients can complete forms on their devices before stepping into the clinic, reducing front-desk bottlenecks.
• Digital intake forms – Medical history, allergies, and symptoms are automatically populated into the EHR, eliminating duplicate data entry.

2. Smart Scheduling and Queue Management

Although scheduled appointments are uncommon in an urgent care setting, it’s crucial to handle both urgent and routine cases when they arise efficiently. A patient experiencing chest pains must be seen immediately, while someone with a routine follow-up can wait a bit longer. EHR systems with integrated smart scheduling tools provide key features like:

• Automated appointment scheduling – Patients can book online, and the system balances urgent and routine cases.
• Wait-time tracking and patient flow management – Staff can see real-time wait times and prioritize critical cases.

3. Integrated E-Prescribing (eRx)

A patient comes in with a sore throat, worried it might be strep. After a quick test, you confirm the diagnosis and, with just a few clicks, send the prescription directly to their pharmacy. An urgent care EHR with e-prescription capabilities enables:

• Instant prescription management – Medications are electronically sent to the pharmacy, minimizing wait times.
• Built-in medication safety checks – The system flags potential drug interactions or allergies, reducing medication errors.

4. Real-Time Documentation and Voice Recognition

Clinicians should be focused on patient care, not buried in paperwork. Yet, excessive documentation remains a top contributor to burnout, often forcing providers to spend more time charting than treating patients. That’s why the best EHRs for urgent care have AI-powered documentation tools, such as:

• Speech-to-text capabilities – Instead of typing, providers can dictate notes, and the system transcribes them instantly.
• Customizable templates – Standardized visit templates for common urgent care conditions (e.g., flu, lacerations, fractures) save time.

5. Built-in Telemedicine Capabilities

A working parent wakes up feeling unwell but has a full day of meetings and school drop-offs ahead. Instead of rearranging their schedule, they hop on a quick virtual visit during a break, get diagnosed, and receive a prescription—all without stepping into urgent care. 

The COVID-19 pandemic reshaped healthcare expectations, making virtual visits a necessity rather than a convenience. Built-in telemedicine capabilities allow:

• On-demand virtual visits – Non-emergency cases (e.g., minor infections, rashes, medication refills) can be handled remotely.
• Seamless integration with patient records – Virtual visit notes, prescriptions, and follow-ups sync directly into the EHR.

6. Efficient Coding and Billing Tools

Your front desk is busy checking in patients, and your providers are focused on care, but a simple coding mistake could delay payments or lead to denied claims. Instead of dealing with back-and-forth corrections, automated coding tools ensure accuracy upfront, helping you avoid reimbursement pitfalls with:

• ICD-10 coding assistance – The system suggests the correct diagnosis and procedure codes based on provider notes.
• Claim scrubbing and real-time eligibility checks – Ensures accurate claims submission, reducing denials and delays.

7. Seamless Lab and Diagnostic Integration

A parent brings their child in with a high fever and worries it might be the flu. You order a rapid flu test, and within minutes, the results appear directly in your EHR—no chasing paperwork and unnecessary delays, just fast answers so you can provide the right treatment immediately. Patients today expect quick, convenient access to their health information, including test results. An urgent care EHR with a built-in lab and diagnostic integration provides:

• Electronic lab orders and results – Providers order tests with one click, and results are instantly available.
• Imaging and test report access – X-rays and ultrasounds are linked directly to patient records for quick review.

Choosing the Best EHR for Your Urgent Care

Not all EHRs are designed for the fast pace of urgent care. Look for:

• Customizable Workflows – Adapts to your clinic’s needs
• Seamless Compliance & Security – HIPAA-compliant and always up-to-date
• Reliable Support and Training – A dedicated team to help optimize your system

Generic EHRs often lack the speed and flexibility urgent care centers like yours need. At EMR-EHR, we offer a specialized solution tailored for urgent care workflows, ensuring smooth operations and better patient outcomes.

Future-Proof Your Practice with the Right Urgent Care EHR

Running an urgent care clinic means balancing walk-ins, scheduled visits, and high patient expectations—all while ensuring providers can focus on delivering fast, quality care. Your team moves quickly to meet demand, but if your urgent care EHR can’t keep up, it creates bottlenecks that slow down your practice and impact patient journeys.

When your EHR supports efficiency, your clinic runs better, your team stays productive, and your patients receive faster, higher-quality care. Key features like contactless check-in and smart scheduling help reduce wait times, while integrated e-prescribing and real-time documentation simplify charting and improve accuracy.

Don’t let an outdated system hold you back. Book a demo with EMR-EHR today and see how the right EHR can transform your practice.

Upgrade to an EHR Built for Urgent Care

Optimizing the healthcare system to improve treatment outcomes and reduce health costs requires patient engagement, the process by which individuals become more active participants in their own health. Despite this, most healthcare organizations lack a patient engagement strategy, preventing patients from fully benefiting from available resources, such as patient education materials, care plan management tools and more.

Patient engagement has become increasingly important, particularly to health organizations transitioning to a fee-for-value payment model and to those participating in Meaningful Use. The goals of both are to improve care quality and the patient experience while reducing the cost of care.

• Fee-for-value: If your organization plans on transitioning to a value-based payment model, whether by joining an ACO, a shared savings program or a different type of organization that incentivizes value over volume, patient engagement will be key. Engaged patients are more likely to follow care plans, achieve health goals and have better treatment outcomes, which means they are also less likely to need hospitalization.
• Meaningful Use: In order to successfully attest for Stage 2 of the Meaningful Use program, providers must get more than 5 percent of their patients to do the following: use secure electronic messaging to communicate with the provider on relevant health information; and view online, download or transmit their health information. With a well-designed patient engagement strategy, organizations can accomplish these goals and create more activated patients in the process.

Leveraging a Patient Portal for Patient Engagement

It is imperative, now more than ever, for organizations to actively promote engagement and implement technologies that facilitate patient-provider collaboration. However, many organizations struggle with this due to the fact that they lack resources for engagement or are unsure of where to start.

One easy way to jump-start an engagement strategy is to implement a patient portal and encourage patients to use it. Patient portal software makes communication easier (patients can send secure messages to their provider at any time), it gets patients thinking about their health outside the doctor’s office (they can access care plans and track vitals), and it contributes to overall satisfaction (patients can schedule appointments easily, request medication refills and pay their bills). It is also a tool that patients are ready and willing to use.

The EHR Incentive Program has been around for several years now, and few healthcare providers are unfamiliar with Meaningful Use and all it entails. The program main draw is the stimulus payments that physicians can qualify for each year by successfully adopting, implementing, upgrading or demonstrating meaningful use of certified EHR technology.

Starting this year, qualifying for incentive payments requires using 2014 Edition certified software. This means that physicians must attest to Meaningful Use using an EHR solution that has proven through extensive testing that it is capable of supporting requirements for both Stage 1 and 2, including electronic health information exchange, interoperability and patient engagement.

In order to accommodate physicians whose EHR vendors have not yet achieved Stage 2 certification, CMS and the ONC decided that in 2014 only all Meaningful Use participants will report for just 90 days – regardless of whether the physician is in their first year of Stage 1 or already getting started on Stage 2. This means that healthcare professionals can begin their Meaningful Use reporting this year as late as October 1, 2014. Physicians are warned, however, not to wait until the last minute to get started.

1st Providers Choice understands physicians’ concerns, and we want our users to start the reporting process early. That’s why we worked hard to get certified for Stage 2. Our EHR software and Patient Healthcare Portal solution are both 2014 ONC Stage 2 Certified, allowing physicians to start their 90-day reporting period immediately.

To help you achieve your goals, we assign a Meaningful Use expert to your practice. They guide you through the reporting process and show you how to use the EHR’s Meaningful Use dashboard to keep track of your progress. Our trainers also work with you to go over using drug formularies, setting up lab interfaces, e-prescribing controlled substances, and using the patient portal to achieve Meaningful Use.

Our patient portal makes it easy for physicians to meet the following patient engagement requirements:

• Provide online access to health information to more than 50% of all unique patients (who were seen by you during the reporting period) within 4 business days.
• Have 5% of all unique patients view their health information online, download it, or transmit it to a third party.
• Have 5% of unique patients (who were seen by you during the reporting period) send you a secure message.

1st Providers Choice has also made the necessary upgrades to ensure our EHR is up to date and our Practice Management software is ready for ICD-10. We have already begun testing our software with insurance payers and clearing houses to ensure a smooth transition to ICD-10 for hospitals and physician practices.

Interested in learning more about fully certified EHR software? Call 480-782-1116 today!

The Arizona Osteopathic Medical Association (AOMA) will be hosting its 92nd annual convention next month, from April 9-13 in Scottsdale, Arizona – and 1st Providers Choice is attending to showcase their Family Medicine EHR software. The 1st Providers team had tremendous success at last year’s meeting, and we are excited to meet with doctors again this year.

1st Providers Choice understands the unique challenges that osteopaths face, especially when it comes to clinical documentation. That’s why we have designed an EHR that is easy to use and that can adapt to the requirements of this specialty. In fact, our EHR software allows osteopaths and family medicine health professionals to provide more accurate and efficient care to patients, all the while reducing costs.

With tools like e-prescribing, patient portal integration, lab tracking, appointment reminders and more, 1st Providers Choice’s EHR is the ideal choice for osteopathic medicine providers. To learn more about our EHR software, find our booth at the AOMA convention, speak with a member of our team, and view a free demo.

In addition to hosting EHR vendors and other software exhibitors, the AOMA conference will cover a variety of topics ranging from personalized medicine to obesity basic medical treatment. To see a full schedule of events at the AOMA meeting.

Adopting EHR software can modify provider workflow and charting processes. This means that healthcare professionals must strategically implement the new technology in order to provide high quality care without affecting productivity. What providers often fail to take into account, however, is that patients must also get used to the EHR’s presence in the exam room. Therefore, providers must implement the software in a way that does not affect patient satisfaction.

Here are a few ways that physicians can use their EHR software to improve the doctor-patient relationship.

Use the Chart View screen to review the patient’s medical history. Doing so before entering the exam room will allow you to interact with the patient straightaway without having to go straight to the computer. 1st Providers Choice’s Chart View menu provides physicians with important patient information, such as:

• Problem list
• Chronic conditions
• Past and current medications
• Patient allergies
• Family and social histories

Engage the patient in the visit by explaining how the EHR software is being used. Though most patients aren’t wary of what their doctor is doing, too much time spent typing can make the visit feel impersonal and the patient feel neglected. Instead of having the patient wait while you send out a prescription electronically or transmit a lab order through the EHR, involve them in the process and show them what you are doing. After you type visit notes into the EHR, let the patient know that they can view their visit summaries through your practice’s online patient healthcare portal.

Make sure your computer is positioned in a way that is easy for the patient to view. This is critical if you plan to show the patient test results in the EHR or demonstrate how an e-prescription is sent. It is also important in order to prevent the computer from becoming an obstacle that hinders free-flowing communication. Instead of positioning your EHR-enabled computer on a desk between you and the patient, put it somewhere that the patient can easily see.

To learn more about our EHR software solutions and how they can benefit your practice, call 480-782-1116 or contact us online.