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The current trends in urgent care are laden with cutthroat competition. With pharmacies and retail giants entering this business, proactive strategies have taken a central stage. Beyond providing immediate treatment, urgent care centers have expanded their services to include preventive and routine care. To capitalize on the growing demand for occupational medicine, many now offer workplace injury treatment, drug testing, and employee health assessments to attract corporate clients.
Simultaneously, the rise of groundbreaking technologies like AI, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, and GenAI continues to reshape patient expectations and drive cost-efficient healthcare solutions, each accompanied by its own set of challenges.
This article aims to empower you to respond to these disruptions skillfully by focusing on one of the cornerstones of the healthcare ecosystem: EHR software. It unveils the top 10 essential features of an urgent care EHR and outlines key steps practitioners can take to select and implement the right system.
Urgent care operates in a fast-paced environment, managing a high volume of patients daily. Unlike primary care, which focuses on preventive and routine services, these centers must provide immediate assistance. Here, even a few minutes of EHR downtime is not an option, as it can disrupt workflows, delay treatment, and impact revenue. Opting for a cloud-based EHR lowers this risk by ensuring:
Related Article: How to Avoid an EHR Downtime
AI has permeated every nook and corner of healthcare, and urgent care software is no exception. With its ability to nearly eliminate manual data entry and generate SOAP notes at the click of a button, the technology is no less than a boon to a facility that seems to be walking on a tightrope. This latest innovation:
Since both patients and providers require quick access to medical records in an urgent care setup, versatile clinical documentation tools in EHR have become indispensable. Designed to enhance patient-provider interaction, health platforms support multiple stakeholders, including physicians, individuals receiving care, administrators, and payers. By choosing a health portal integrated EHR, you can:
The gap between providing a service and receiving payment defines the difference between an average and an excellent RCM. With an integrated EHR-RCM platform, data from the EHR automatically gets updated in the RCM, significantly minimizing errors from manual transfers. This also improves efficiency, eases administrative workload, and lowers claim denials and rejection rates by:
Patient satisfaction is closely tied to wait time in Urgent Care. Reporting and analytics in urgent care EHRs are fundamentals in developing trailblazing techniques to minimize wait times, as they help:
Urgent care visits are often unplanned and time-sensitive. An EHR system with an integrated patient kiosk simplifies the care-delivery process, allowing patients to:
By automating these tasks, front desk staff can focus on more complex responsibilities, while self-service check-ins reduce errors and improve efficiency.
Fostering quick decision-making in a time-sensitive urgent care facility, lab integration automates lab ordering, result retrievals, and documentation. Maintaining real-time interoperability with your EHR system, the feature:
E-prescribing in urgent care EMR supports speed, efficiency, and accuracy by allowing providers to send prescriptions directly to the patient’s preferred pharmacy. The functionality also checks for drug interactions, allergies, or contraindications. For therapies requiring controlled substances, the EPCS (Electronic Prescribing for Controlled Substances) integration ensures:
Medication tracking, refills, compliance with meaningful use and MIPS, and sending prescriptions remotely after a virtual consultation are other aspects managed well by e-prescribing.
Many urgent care visits stem from conditions that can be managed remotely, such as hypertension, diabetes, and post-discharge follow-ups. Remote patient monitoring (RPM) enables clinicians to monitor real-time vitals, such as blood pressure, glucose levels, oxygen saturation, etc., allowing them to intervene early without requiring unnecessary in-person appointments. Some patients recovering from respiratory issues, infections, or injuries require short-term monitoring post-discharge. RPM helps track progress and prevent complications. It:
Besides, many insurance providers and Medicare/Medicaid have started reimbursing RM services, further emphasizing their growing significance.
Since urgent care facilities manage high patient volumes, walk-ins, and time-sensitive cases, the EHR-PMS integration becomes non-negotiable. With its unmatched capabilities to enhance both administrative and billing workflows, patient outcomes, and practice performance, the PMS software is a must-have for a facility that requires quick registration, accurate documentation, and simplified reimbursements. It:
Now that we’ve covered the 10 essential features your urgent care EHR software must have, it’s time to reflect on how to find one that encompasses all of them. The task can seem tedious in the absence of a well-planned strategy. If you’d rather skip the guesswork and take a direct approach, our blog, ‘How to Find the Right EHR,’ is a great place to start. It provides valuable insights to guide your decision-making. Discover:
Choose the essential features your urgent care EHR must have for seamless workflow and better patient care
