Healthcare workers have been heroically battling COVID-19 from the front lines in terms of treatment and care, but the healthcare industry as a whole is struggling to recover from the pandemic’s impact behind the scenes.

From recovering loss of revenue to improving patient-provider trust, here are some of the most pressing obstacles healthcare providers and medical facilities face—and how they can overcome them.

1. Minimizing Risk of In-Person Patient Exposure

As the country works to slow the spread of COVID-19, healthcare providers are tasked with finding innovative ways to minimize in-person contact—while still delivering top-quality patient care.

Virtual waiting room solutions are key to reducing wait times, avoiding long wait times, and minimizing in-office crowding. Fully integrated digital patient intake and registration solutions allow providers to collect and verify required forms prior to patient appointments, eliminating the need for in-office, in-person paperwork.

2. Saving Time Spent on Patient Administration & Paperwork

It’s more important than ever for medical facilities to improve the patient experience—and that means finding time to focus more on patient care and less on administration.

Studies show that most providers and healthcare staff spend more time in their EMR/EHR systems than providing direct patient care. Automating patient intake, registration, and engagement allows providers to focus their efforts where it matters most: on their patients.

3. Increasing Practice Revenue

The COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted the healthcare industry across the board—especially when it comes to revenue. The unprecedented spike in appointment and procedure cancellations has heavily impacted every size medical facility, from large hospital systems to smaller private practices.

By adopting an automated patient intake, registration, and engagement solution, providers are able to simultaneously increase practice revenue and cut administrative costs. For example, healthcare providers that use Yosi Health report a 20% increase in collection rates for their practice. Plus, by digitizing patient intake and registration forms that integrate with their ERM systems, they cut costs on printed paperwork and save significant time spent on manual administrative tasks.

4. Creating a Better Patient Care Experience

As the country works to slow the spread of COVID-19, healthcare providers are tasked with finding innovative ways to deliver top-quality patient care.

A study by the Alliance of Community Health Plans shows that only 31% of patients feel comfortable about the idea of going back to the doctor. Providers nationwide are adopting virtual waiting room solutions to give patients a contactless intake and registration experience, showing patients that they’re committed to minimizing risk for everyone involved.

5. Improving Practice Reputation

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted a pressing issue for the healthcare industry: A lack of patient trust. Medical facilities nationwide and struggling to establish trust between patients, providers, and the community.

Healthcare providers need to better manage their reputation online. Virtual waiting rooms have been shown to improve the patient care experience—and Yosi Health allows your patients to easily share their experience. Easily collect and automatically post reviews, ratings, and other feedback to all of your online platforms—including your social media profiles.

Start tackling your most pressing obstacles today with Yosi Health. Learn more about our fully integrated patient intake, registration, and engagement platform and how we can help your practice navigate these truly unprecedented times.

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As the nation continues rolling out the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine, clinics, pharmacies, and local health departments are struggling to keep up with the pace of the campaign.

Tech companies specializing in digital patient intake, registration, and management platforms are stepping in to help.

Yosi Health, for example, recently launched an exclusive Vaccine Management Platform designed to help streamline COVID-19 distribution efforts. The platform allows healthcare providers to automate patient appointments, reminders, communications, and more. By saving time on paperwork and outreach, providers can dedicate more time to providing quick, quality service for every patient.

Yosi Health CEO & Founder Hari Prasad spoke with ABC News recently to discuss the bottlenecks vaccine distribution centers face when it comes to managing COVID-19 vaccine distribution—and how they can overcome them. Here’s a brief excerpt:

“It’s really the lack of information that is the primary pain point that we see across our care centers,” said Hari Prasad, CEO of Yosi Health. “In addition to that, people not knowing how to schedule or where to go to book their appointments, what information they need to carry with them. Those all add to the pain points as well, which is why we see lines that are sometimes four hours, eight hours long.”

Now, tech companies like Prasad’s Yosi Health and Sanchez’ Enliven Health are stepping in to try to help local health departments, hospitals and pharmacies try to cope with massive demand for these vaccines. But even these tech company executives admit that an online approach to booking appointments will be challenging for the nation’s elderly, or people with limited computer access.

Read on here: Vaccine rollout: Americans urged to ‘hang tight’ while booking appointments online

The COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating effects on the national healthcare system. There have been serious impacts beyond the immediate effects of the virus—especially those at risk of opioid use disorder.

The national opioid epidemic has been exacerbated by the impact of COVID-19. The emotional and psychological effect of the pandemic has led healthcare providers to find innovative ways to identify and address mental health crises in patients before they occur.

Yosi Health is helping healthcare providers prevent opioid abuse by identifying high-risk patients through digital patient screening assessments. By asking the right questions before seeing patients, providers are able to intervene and minimize the risk of potential overdoses.

Yosi Health CEO & Founder Hari Prasad sat down with Pharmaceutical Processing World to explain how healthcare providers are tackling the opioid crisis during COVID-19 using sophisticated screening tools and AI algorithms—including Yosi Health. Here’s a brief excerpt:

The crisis is forcing the healthcare system to find novels ways to treat people with opioid use disorder and those at risk for the condition, said Hari Prasad, co-founder and CEO of Yosicare, which has developed a customizable mobile patient intake and registration platform.

One central way to battle the opioid epidemic is addressing the current mental health crisis. “COVID-19 has tripled the rate of depression in U.S. adults in all demographic groups — 27.8% of adults reported depression symptoms, in contrast with 8.5% before the pandemic,” Prasad said.

People with depression, like those with chronic pain, are more likely to abuse opioids. By conducting patient screening assessments, healthcare providers can identify patients at risk for opioid addiction. Using AI algorithms, medical systems can identify individuals with the highest risk of opioid use disorder. After that, “they’re able to intervene, and minimize the risk of an opioid overdose,” Prasad said.

Read on here: COVID-19 forces healthcare industry to get creative when battling opioid crisis