Efforts to maximize the value of an onsite clinic can often focus on utilization and communication: making sure that employees know the capabilities of their clinic and are taking advantage of scheduled events (like flu vaccinations or health risk assessments.) However, analysis of the data being gathered in the clinic on a day-to-day basis is sometimes neglected.
Robust Electronic Medical Record (EMR)
In the clinic, a robust Electronic Medical Record (EMR) should track a variety of metrics such as clinic utilization (i.e., number of visits, labs, other services), visits by type, and referrals by specialty. With the right tools, aggregated data from clinic activities can provide valuable insight into patterns of behavior or ongoing safety risks. While EMRs need to safeguard confidential patient information, a data portal can scrub relevant protected health information and other confidential material, preventing direct access to the EMR and ensuring security and HIPAA compliance. This type of technology should also allow multivariate analysis across a specific period, giving insight into daily clinic life.
With a data portal, departmental managers can view information about their teams and compare it to summaries from similar departments, while facility managers can access information from all departments in their locations, and corporate managers can view enterprise-wide data. Understanding cost drivers and the health issues that affect the covered population enables the setting of priorities, tracking KPls, identifying optimal benefits, and making other critical clinic decisions. From an operational perspective, identifying injury trends in a department can help safety managers modify sites or behaviors contributing to injuries.
Clinic Return on Investment
Another important analysis capability with data aggregation is clinic return on investment. This aggregated EMR data can be reviewed against other systems and financials. These KPls might include overall healthcare costs, reduced administrative and case management volume, productivity improvements, and employee benefits. With the proper technology tools, clinic data can be a powerful tool in improving employee productivity and safety.
Best-in-class providers provide a platform for clients to interact with their data, run reports, see trend analyses, request services, and securely exchange files and messages.
Author Chad Brunner, Medcor Advocate. Medcor helps employers reduce the costs of workers’ compensation and general health care by providing injury triage services and operating worksite health and wellness clinics. Medcor’s services are available 24/7 nationwide for worksites of any size in any industry. Headquartered in McHenry, Illinois, the company operates 174 clinics and provides triage services to over 90,000 worksites across all 50 states and US territories. Medcor’s triage methods are covered by U.S. & foreign patents, including U.S. No. 7,668,733; 7,716,070; & 7,720,692; other patents pending. Medcor is privately held. Learn more at www.medcor.com.
