How Digital Forms Improve Post-Acute Care

Key Points:

To solve post-acute paperwork challenges organizations need to:

• Reduce costs to third party vendors to create and modify forms

• Proactively manage data quality issues

• Reduce manual effort to get forms delivered, signed and into the EHR

Organizations face multiple challenges in getting forms completed accurately and on time. Shrinking bottom lines and lack of staff require organizations to re-think how they manage mountains of patient and staff paperwork. These issues can impact the quality of care, onboarding compliance, and reimbursement.  

Progressive organizations are having success creating and delivering HIPAA-secure forms as these examples demonstrate.

Here are the top challenges and how QliqSOFT’s digital engagement platform solves them:

Meet Time Sensitive Onboarding and/or Order Requirements

Challenge: Hospice care is subject to stringent government and insurer requirements requiring use of the entity’s specific form. This often results in organizations completing the document manually and then faxing it, driving it, or mailing it to the patient or Power of Attorney (POA) for signature, all of which cause delays and add costs. For example, the hospice organization may send a staff person to the home solely for the purpose of signing a document.  

Forms such as initial and ongoing certifications of terminal illness need to be completed within strict deadlines (e.g., within 2 or 3 days of admission). Delays can jeopardize billing or patient eligibility for care.

Do Not Resuscitate, pain, and symptom management orders need to be processed quickly as well. Many of these and other forms require signatures from physicians, who often have additional jobs may not be readily available. Even during business hours, faxing a document to the medical director’s other employer to give to the medical director can cause significant delays.

Solution: QliqSOFT’s Quincy Digital Engagement platform allows administrators or staff to save precious time, start care quickly and meeting billing timeframes by:

• uploading standard forms,  

• adding fields for signature, dates and data capture, and  

• securely sending the document to the patient, POA, and or provider for signature.  

Get Paper Forms Signed Given Staffing Challenges

Challenge: Inconsistent training or high staff turnover can lead to errors or misunderstandings about how to complete forms properly, impacting accuracy and efficiency. Reliance on paper forms also increases errors and delays related to missing data or using the wrong version of forms. Staff may have to make avoidable trips to the office to pick up and drop off forms. In addition to delays, reliance on paper forms makes it impossible for managers to track where documents are in the workflow, making it easy to lose track of key documents. When combined with constant changes to standard forms, the situation becomes overwhelming and costly.

Solution: QliqSOFT’s Quincy Digital Engagement platform eliminates the need for staff to travel strictly for form completion allowing administrators to:  

• securely send standard forms for signature to groups or individuals, and

• track the status of the form’s completion from sending, through receipt, completion and return.  

Address Third-party Technology Issues

Challenge: Converting to digital forms does not guarantee that all paper forms issues are solved. Some digital forms vendors make forms or updates to documents for organizations, adding costs and delays. Others allow for organizations to make updates but insert complex workflows taking precious staff time to update. Yet, other forms vendors rely on manual processes to deliver forms.

Ineffective or non-integrated electronic health record (EHR) systems can lead to missing information, duplicate work, or errors in documentation. Manual processes can exacerbate delays and errors.  

Solution: QliqSOFT’s Quincy Digital Engagement platform:

• easily creates and modifies custom forms to capture signatures, data, images and more,  

• automatically sends forms to recipients

• automatically uploads forms into the EHR.

Collaborate Across Care Teams

Challenge:  Forms often require input and signatures from interdisciplinary teams (nurses, social workers, chaplains, etc.). Ineffective communication can lead to incomplete or delayed documentation.

Solution: QliqSOFT’s Quincy Digital Engagement platform allows users to securely route forms to multiple users for input and signatures.

Eliminate Errors in Documentation

Challenge: Mistakes in patient identifiers, dates, or medical details can result in rework and delays in processing, impacting care delivery and reimbursement. Addressing these challenges often involves improving workflows, adopting effective technology, and enhancing staff education and communication processes.

Solution:  QliqSOFT’s Quincy Digital Engagement platform allows users to set required fields, including complex rules where one or more of a set needs to be selected.

Organizations are realizing significant operational efficiency gains, reducing costs and improving engagement with the Quincy Digital Engagement platform. Click here to contact us to explore how we can help you.