Telemedicine is among the top growing areas in the United States healthcare industry. Therefore, medical providers must integrate their Cerner electronic health record (EHR) with robust telemedicine software — such as Curogram — to keep up with the evolving patient demand for remote healthcare.

While many healthcare providers want to provide telemedicine, many perceive the process of integrating Cerner with telemedicine software as too costly despite statistics showing that telemedicine solutions save money in the long run. And concerns over a long telemedicine onboarding process are unfounded as well when Cerner users integrate with Curogram — it takes 48 hours or less.

The hesitance to integrate Cerner with a telemedicine platform like Curogram is understandable. But after reviewing the necessity to do so and the benefits that telemedicine provides healthcare providers who use Cerner and patients, you won’t want to wait another day to integrate with Curogram.  

Why is integrating Cerner with a telemedicine platform important?

As a cloud-based EHR software for health organizations of various sizes and specialties to streamline operations and guarantee up-to-date patient information and accurate diagnosis and treatment, Cerner offers the following capabilities:

  • Charting
  • Documentation
  • Revenue management
  • Health analytics 

Cerner is a great EHR option, but Curogram’s telemedicine solution addresses the over-abundance of paperwork and the burden of inefficient clinical workflow that even a great EHR cannot solve. 

Curogram eliminates the bulk of administrative tasks in medical practices and saves them from wasting precious time they can spend attending to patient needs and admitting more patients. 

There's no shortage of upsides to integrating a telemedicine solution with an EHR like Cerner. Some of the most notable EHR-telemedicine benefits include:

  1. Accurate and fast data entry
  2. Saving important communications between patients and providers, like through 2-way texting
  3. Increased efficiency means more time for new patients

Accurate and Fast Data Entry

If you use a telemedicine solution that doesn't integrate with your EHR, you are wasting valuable time on administrative tasks and have the potential to make errors. 

Without Cerner EHR integration with Curogram, the staff must transcribe paper intake forms and manually enter the data into the EHR, leaving plenty of room for error. For example, patient handwriting may be difficult to read, causing a transcription mistake. 

Curogram’s electronic patient intake forms solve this issue. It uploads all data that patients submit electronically from their phones or desktop computers automatically into Cerner’s EHR. 

An added benefit is that patients can send their intake forms from anywhere before an in-person or virtual visit, cutting down wait times for appointments and improving patient satisfaction. 

An Increase in Workflow Efficiency Means More Time for New Patients

Your workload increases in a traditional in-person setting as you admit more patients. The paperwork piles up quickly, and your staff may not be able to handle the increased workload. Then, there's the logistical nightmare that you have to deal with, as your clinic's hallways are brimming with patients while your staff spends two-thirds of their shifts inputting data into your EHR manually. 

Integrating Cerner with telemedicine services from Curogram eliminates many administrative tasks by automating them, but the benefits do not stop there. 

What must-have telemedicine features does Curogram offer Cerner users?

When you integrate Cerner with Curogram, you get access to various telemedicine services that others do not provide or cannot. 

Many healthcare providers use commercial software apps like Zoom and Skype alongside their Cerner EHR to enable video visits. But commercial apps do more harm than good. For one, these applications aren't HIPAA compliant by default, which is a serious concern as you must use a HIPAA-compliant telemedicine solution when transmitting electronic protected health information (ePHI). Plus, they don’t integrate with Cerner’s EHR, creating an administrative nightmare. 

Curogram is HIPAA-compliant and has the following telemedicine benefits in addition to Cerner EHR integration:

  1. Smart appointment reminders
  2. Electronic patient intake forms
  3. Integrated schedules
  4. Virtual waiting rooms
  5. HIPAA-compliant SMS messaging
  6. Automatic differentiation between in-office and virtual appointments

Smart Appointment Reminders

Too many patients miss their appointments, causing clinics in the United States to lose over $150 billion combined annually. One in five patients don't show up for scheduled doctor's appointments and calling to remind patients can be ineffective if they don't answer. 

Patients prefer to receive appointment reminders via text — it's become the most convenient way to convey information to people. 

Curogram offers smart appointment reminders that medical practices can send to patients automatically to remind them of their scheduled visits. Curogram's text appointment reminder feature can lower the number of no-shows by as much as 75%! 

Electronic Intake Forms

Healthcare providers can collect patient medical info without tons of paperwork with Curogram’s electronic intake forms, especially from new patients attending a telemedicine visit. They are more convenient for healthcare providers and patients since they can fill them out anywhere and submit them before their appointment.

Once a patient completes their form, Curogram inputs the data into Cerner’s EHR automatically. Curogram's integrated solution helps you save time and cut back on tedious, administrative tasks like manual data entry that is error-prone. 

Appointment Scheduling

Scheduling appointments without Curogram’s telemedicine solution is a tiresome task. Normally, when a patient calls the office, they must discuss the available time slots and then select a time and day that suits them. 

Thanks to Curogram's online schedule integration, patients can see open time slots and choose a time and date they find the most convenient without speaking to anyone. That saves everyone time, and the scheduling process is much simpler and faster. 

Virtual Clinic Environment

When organizing virtual healthcare visits, you should aim to mimic the familiar in-person workflow that patients and your staff are comfortable with.

When communicating through a virtual medium, it's harder to route the patient to the member of staff assigned to them. Curogram solves this problem with a virtual waiting room. 

You can configure the waiting room view so only appropriate clinic staff can view the patient at any given time. If patients have to provide info, the front desk staff sees them. Once they process the patient, they become visible to their medical provider to initiate a virtual appointment with a single click.

Secure Text Messaging

There's a reason patients want to text their healthcare providers — texting is convenient and straightforward. It's important to note that people read 90% of the texts they receive within three minutes. Patients don't answer their phones nearly as often. Curogram's HIPAA-compliant 2-way texting feature lets medical providers set up automated reminders, which is more convenient than calling a patient. 

Telemedicine solutions seldom offer SMS messaging, as it is not a HIPAA-compliant method of communication. With Curogram, you can enable secure texting features and send patients secure links to documents containing ePHI without violating HIPAA rules and regulations.

Medical practices can use Curogram's HIPAA-compliant texting platform for many tasks in addition to appointment reminders. 

Medical practices can leverage Curogram's HIPAA-compliant 2-way texting feature to:

  • Send appointment reminders
  • Send payment links
  • Give information about a visit
  • Give information about prescriptions
  • Send patient intake forms
  • Send details about lab orders 

If the patient has any questions, they can text their healthcare provider directly. You can even set up automated template responses, so the staff doesn't have to type out every answer manually for commonly asked questions. 

Curogram can generate a local business number for your clinic and connect with your Google Business profile so patients can reach you easily. Texting is a rare feature among telemedicine solutions, which is why you should use your website and Google Business profile to inform patients that you offer it.

Differentiates Between Appointment Type

If your patient schedules an in-person visit, they need ample time to prepare for it. A reminder has to take travel time into account and inform the patient of the clinic's exact address. Curogram's smart reminders do this automatically because the system knows if it is an in-office or virtual visit. 

For virtual appointments, the patient doesn't need a big heads-up. You can set a final reminder mere minutes before the visit starts. 

The reminders can also include patient-specific information and additional instructions. For instance, physicians may require photographs of visible conditions before a patient comes in for a virtual appointment, given that they cannot thoroughly examine the patient in a virtual setting. 

Curogram lets you configure reminders to ensure the patient is well-informed of their scheduled appointments and aware of any additional requirements.

Integrating Cerner with Curogram enables not only these top telemedicine features but also allows medical practices a streamlined method to keep their EHR up-to-date and error-free. And integration is a fast, seamless process.

Curogram integrates with Cerner seamlessly.

Most telemedicine integrations aren't smooth. The process can take nearly nine months and cost clinics a lot of money. It often necessitates hiring an IT expert to execute the integration and ensure everything runs smoothly, further delaying the process.

One of Curogram's most significant advantages is speed — it can integrate with Cerner in 48 hours or less. Instead of waiting months to implement basic features and telemedicine services, you can immediately start using 2-way texting, smart reminders, and online scheduling features. Start integrating on Friday, and you have a virtual clinic set up by Monday. 

There's no complex paperwork involved when integrating Cerner with Curogram’s telemedicine services. While you might have to negotiate a contract with a telemedicine vendor in other cases, Curogram has you enter into a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) business associate agreement (BAA) by default.

There's no need for IT assistance when integrating Curogram either. Once connected to Cerner, Curogram auto-imports the following patient data:

  • Name
  • Email
  • Date of birth
  • Phone

For scheduling integration, the software imports the following:

  • Appointment types
  • Location
  • Appointment times
  • Provider

There's no special training required to use Curogram. The UI is simple, and your staff can learn to use it in under fifteen minutes. 

And if you should decide to change EHR providers in the future, rest assured that Curogram can make the change with you. It integrates with Cerner and many other well-known EHR systems, such as DrChrono, Epic, Prime Clinical, and Greenway Health

Enable telemedicine services and improve medical practice by integrating Curogram with Cerner.

Curogram’s telemedicine services live up to the platform’s positive reviews because it solves most day-to-day issues clinics face. The ultimate goal of telemedicine solutions is to improve workflow and save time. With more time, medical practices can focus on admitting patients, which leads to higher revenue. 

With Curogram, you can centralize data and implement features that help you admit 10 or 10,000 patients without increasing your staff's workload. That convenience leads to increased staff satisfaction, higher productivity, improved efficiency, and, ultimately, higher patient satisfaction, which helps you retain and gain more patients. Plus, Curogram has an online review feature that helps promote the excellent service you provide through review sites like Google and Yelp.  

When you want to integrate the best telemedicine services alongside Cerner’s EHR, the easy choice is Curogram. Book a demo today.