Improve Your Clinic Efficiency with One Simple Form Update

Still filling out the same info on every single form? That repetition is wasting your time (and an efficiency killer). Pre-populate the sections that never change or set them to auto-fill and get more time back.

Forms are a part of the job. Referrals, requisitions, consents, insurance paperwork, and the list goes on.

You can’t escape them. But that doesn’t mean they have to eat up your valuable hours. I don’t know why it took me so long to figure this out because it’s so simple.

Here’s the tip: pre-fill sections of forms you use all the time with the information that you add in every time.

Saving time (and improving clinic efficiency) with pre-populated forms

For example, we have an institution-wide standard consent form that requires the physician’s name and license number. That information will always be the same. Writing it each time quickly gets old, but it needs to be on there.

The solution? Why not fill in that same-every-time section of the form once and photocopy it going forward?

Big deal, you might be thinking. So I saved 10 seconds.

Sure, it was 10 seconds. But how many do you do a year…20? Hundreds? Depending on your practice, it could be thousands. Pre-filling 1,000 consent forms per year x 10 seconds saved/consent form = ~166 minutes = 2.7 hours saved…for one form.

How many cumulative minutes could you put back in your “life” bucket if you quickly did this for a few of your regularly used forms? Just like templates, your most commonly used forms will be highest yield.

Admittedly, you could take this step forward and add the year to the date section (yes, I like to cut down my documentation time that much). Now it’s a yearly update, but one less box to complete for each consent signed.

As Steven Bartlett points out in Diary of a CEO, sweating the small stuff makes big differences.

Pre-populating electronic forms

If you use electronic forms, you should be able to add this information so that it is automatically loaded when you use it. If you’re unsure how to, a quick Google search is likely to have the answer. Or, if your EMR/EHR provider has a fast and helpful customer service line, give them a call, and they might be able to do it live in front of your eyes.

Another advantage of electronic forms is that you can set it up so some of the information that doesn’t change, like a patient’s name and contact info, is auto-filled. This might save your admin from having to add it later or needing to slap a sticker on it. Still, that is more seconds.

Other forms you can consider pre-populating

• Requisition forms
  • Imaging, pathology, microbiology
• Any referral you commonly make that has a specific form to complete
  • Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy, Dietetics, Social Work, Counselling, Audiology, Denturist
  • A specific clinic
  • You could take this a step further (*looks in the mirror*) and have multiple versions of the form with the request/plan for presentations you commonly send (In my case: OT hand therapy. I have one that I can free hand any text, but also pre-populated for referrals, Dupuytren’s fasciectomy, flexor tendon repair, extensor tendon repair, post-traumatic stiffness, etc.)
• Consent forms
  • If your consent forms include a risks section (that can vary by procedure), make separate consent forms by procedure to save you from adding those in each time
  • Ex. a trigger finger consent from, carpal tunnel release, skin cancer excision with local flap, skin cancer excision with skin graft, etc. Make it personal to what you do.
• OR booking and/or equipment request forms
• Work notes for patients
• Any order forms – office supplies, medical supplies, etc.

Kicking it old school to save time on insurance forms

Another type of paperwork we spend a lot of time on is insurance paperwork. Most patients have unique ones based on their insurance policy that they bring in, so it’s hard to have them filled out ahead of time.

Does that mean that you can’t automate part this? No! Think about it – regardless of the provider, what does each insurance form have at the end? Your information.

Enter the stamp. Pulling out this sucker at the end of each insurance form does feel a bit like you’re in an 80s movie. BUT slapping that down like a judge’s gavel is infinitely faster and more efficient than writing out your name, contact information, specialty and license number (and if you’ve seen my chicken scratch, it’s a heck of a lot more legible too).

That’s it – a couple of small tweaks to your regularly used forms today could just start saving you seconds (and then minutes!) in your next patient visit.

Share your tips!

What other ways have you found to streamline standard forms?