How can physician credentialing add value with well-maintained data? Technology is helping advance healthcare on many fronts, but according to this 2014 analysis, connecting patients to doctors is not one of them. While more patients are turning to the web to connect to their healthcare providers, an alarming number of hospital physician finders and health plan provider directories are hard to use or return inaccurate results. A survey of 40 health systems across the country found directories returned the correct physician specialty only 38 percent of the time!

While technology, apps and automation have improved and simplified other areas of our lives–everything from travel and shopping to sharing files and photos instantly–healthcare administration (a $360 billion niche in healthcare) seems to have been left behind in the technology boom. We know from personal experience that patients are frustrated when they look up doctors in their network, call to make an appointment only to learn the doctor has moved or is no longer accepting new patients. Patients who also use the Internet to book dinner reservations, navigate city streets, and buy plane tickets to places across the globe in just a few clicks have come to expect the same level of ease and accuracy in their healthcare. And we have to agree: expecting to be able to access up-to-date practice information about physicians isn’t crazy.

At andros, we are tackling this problem of healthcare administration by starting at the source of provider data: the credentialing office. We help our clients find meaningful efficiencies in the medical credentialing process and organize their provider data so that it can add value throughout their organization, including their provider director.

While provider data within your healthcare organization starts in the credentialing department, it should not end there! Use this flowchart to see how your provider data is stacking up throughout your organization.

At andros, we believe physician credentialing should be a process that helps solves problems, rather than a process that doctors, health plans and hospitals have suffer through. Our process starts the credentialing process with quick and simple online application. No more handwritten forms, no more manual data entry. The data entered by the doctor is automatically verified against the corresponding primary sources. This data is then maintained and can be easily accessed and analyzed for all downstream operations, including building your provider finder.

Source: New feed