342- Improving Your Patient Experience with Your EHR

Welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor where each week we deliver the latest chiropractic research and marketing strategies all in the time it takes to get to your office. Now here's your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid.

Hello and welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor. I AM your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid. On today's episode, we're going to dive deep into patient experience how you can streamline and improve your patient experience utilizing your ehr. Recently I had the opportunity to sit down with John. He is a project Product Manager over at Jane. I have been super impressed with their EHR since I first saw it and today we dive deep into where your EHR is. Meet Patient Experience. Before we get started, I'll say a few words about the smart chiropractor. The smart chiropractor can help power your patient journey from new patient all the way through to reactivations. You can learn more@thesmartchiropractor.com and recently Dr. Jason Deitch and myself released a book all around Monthly recurring revenue called the Payday Practice. For a limited time, we are gifting it to people in our audience. If you'd like a free copy of our new book, the Payday Practice, how to cover your monthly expenses each month with monthly recurring revenue, head over to the paydaypractice.com but without further ado, let's talk patient experience and EHRs with John from Jane. Hey everybody.

As promised, I have the opportunity to sit down and chat with John, Product Manager over at Jane. John, I know you are an expert in everything Jane and you guys have been making a lot of big product updates over the last few years. Thanks for taking some time and chatting with me today.

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

It is my pleasure. And before we get to the update, something you brought up pre roll here that I think would be important to go into are Many people are aware that Jane was founded in Canada and it's caught on like crazy not only with Canadian chiropractors but also US Chiropractors. But there are some differences between the healthcare systems of what happens in Canada and what happens in the U.S. jane has navigated these very well and you've had to navigate them servicing docs in both territories. But for listeners and watchers out there that are maybe unaware of some of those differences, I think it'd be important to build that foundation. Then we could talk about some of the feature updates and how it enhances the productivity of docs in both Canada and the U.S. so what are the big differences between the healthcare systems?

Sure. So a little backstory for those that don't know. Jane was founded in British Columbia, Canada, which is a province on the west coast. And a major difference between the Canadian healthcare system and the US is the US has some things that are universally adopted across all states, like the CPT code set, the way you communicate diagnosis codes with your ICD10s, but Canada doesn't have that. So things can be different from province to province. And actually even insurance companies within each province, you might have to send claims a certain way or communicate what services you did with codes that the insurance company makes up. So there's less standardization in Canada. So when we started moving into the US we learned that although there's lots of differences, there's some nice ones. Like everyone across Canada, the U.S. is communicating their services the same way. So that's the major difference. There aren't these universally accepted things across the country in Canada.

That is fascinating. It seems like, man, that would be sounds easier said than done, but so much easier to work in the United States because you don't have all of these regional differences. But I know anytime you get involved in a new health care system, new insurance requirements, it's challenging. And these companies and some of the regulations don't make it easy. And I know one of the things that Jane has put a lot of effort towards over the last couple of years has been insurances. And specifically relative to private pay in the United States, what have you seen with private pay and insurance in the United States? What have you learned across the journey, and what are some of the features that you think are some of the most powerful for US Based stocks?

Sure. So I'll start with the powerful feature front and something we spent the majority of our time last year on was the ability to upload an electronic remit. So an era. And have Jane do a lot of the tedious work for you so that you're not having to manually input all the information the insurance company provided to you to kind of get a final bill to your patient and to reconcile your claim in Jane. So that's been a big time saver. We have a lot of chiropractors that are practicing and running their own businesses. So any time that we can save them is huge. And something that we're currently working on that we're very close to being done and we're super excited to share with some people very soon is the ability to submit to secondary payers. So if you're treating a family member and they have coverage, say from both of their parents or their own coverage and their spouse. We're going to empower chiropractors to be able to bill both the primary and the secondary coverage, which those that are billing secondaries right now outside of Jane, it can be pretty labor intensive, a lot of manual input. So we're going to remove that as well.

I love that because the ability to streamline workflows so critically important. You touched on it. If you're practicing and then you're the business owner and in many cases you have your hands in some of the billing as well. And being able to streamline those processes, so important when look at those sort of challenges, are they more on the technical side from a coding perspective or are they more regulatory in nature? What's been the experience as you've built out some of these new features?

Sure. So it's more, I'd say on the, on the coding side of things. So although there are lots of exceptions to the rules, we've really kind of approached this from a holistic standpoint where most of how payers are say, communicating their responses, how they're paying you is pretty much the same. So the exceptions are difficult. And if a chiropractor can't bill a claim or they can't reconcile their claim to Jane, that's a big deal. So although these things are small, we do really encourage our customers to reach out to us because if there's something that we can do, even if it fixes a problem for one person, that's a huge deal to that one person. So we want to put a lot of emphasis on that. But the requirements that we're seeing, really when you look at kind of all the chiropractors across the US that are using Jane, they haven't actually been a huge pain point at this point.

Yeah, I get it when we just hopped off doing showcasing a demo of some of the new features. So I'm going to cover everybody listening and watching. Check out the subsequent video that we have showcasing some of these features. And one of the things that I noticed and I mentioned the demo because it came up multiple times then, is really enhancing the relationship between the provider and the patient. And I think there's no better ehr that I've seen or experienced than Jane at really being able to enhance that relationship and that communication. If you had to trace it back, how does this come about? Is this cultural in the organization? Is it design? Is it a combination of both? I know so many chiropractors out There I jokingly say, you know, except for those who use Jane, I've never talked to a chiropractor who likes their ehr. They always feel like it's a hindrance to what they're doing and not a help. But it seems as though Jane from the beginning was really focused on things in a different way. Is that true and how would you quantify or define that from the inside?

Sure. And I'd say that's definitely true from the beginning. And I think that comes from the roots of how Jane was founded as a company. So we have two co founders, Allie and Trevor, and it actually stemmed from Allie having her own problem and experiencing this firsthand. She owns an allied health practice. Allied is our term. We don't have a. We haven't found the term yet. Maybe it exists for chiropractors, PTs, massage therapists, that group of healthcare we call it allied health in Canada. We're hoping it catches on. But anyway, so she was starting her own practice and she couldn't find a solution that worked great for her. And a big part of that was making sure that patients could book online and that it was really cohesive, the relationship between the practitioner and the patient. So it really started from her own problem. So that's been the root of Jane's story. And fast forward to today. Our mission at Jane comes down to helping the helpers or the chiropractors of the helpers. We really want to remove as much friction as possible so that our chiropractors can focus on treating their patients. So that's, that's how we approach everything at Jane and that's how we've always done things from when Jane was founded. So I think that's been a big part of Jane's success.

That is definitely a differentiating factor and a lot of this ties into some of the advancements and product updates. As a product manager at Jane, I know you're intimately in tune with this. It's what you live and breathe each and every day. I also know product updates don't happen overnight quite often. It takes time. You got to flesh it out and really ensure that it's going to do what you'd like it to do. You and I were chatting before we hopped on and you mentioned some on the roadmap and the product journey and some of these updates that have happened over the last few years and have been released. I'd love to just have the opportunity to what are some of your favorites? What are some things that you've been able to push out to users and to chiropractors around the world that have been especially important to you or you've been excited about. And the follow up to that will be whatever you're willing to divulge. Maybe a sneak preview of a couple of things coming in the future.

Sure, that sounds great. So when we started actually gaining ground in the US was back March in 2019, however long ago that was, and we were really growing by word of mouth. We weren't actively reaching out to chiropractors in the US but they were hearing from their Canadian colleagues. So the first major things we had to do were being able to submit claims electronically, primary claims. So although that was a while ago, that was a huge win because that was when we could really start to solve the problem for our chiropractors that build insurance. And then some features along the way that our whole product team has had a had a part in that have been really impactful is memberships, especially the recurring billing side of things. So for people that are providing different ways, more affordable ways for their patients to receive care, and it makes it a little easier on the practice to just set a recurring bill. So memberships has been hugely impactful. And on the, on the patient and practitioner side of things, like the demo that we just had, a feature that helps communicate the coverage to a practitioner when a new patient comes in is just this simple ability to take a picture of your insurance card in your intake form so that you give the practice some time to take a look at that insurance and make sure that the patient has coverage and they have their policy set up in Jane before they come in. So when they actually come in for the visit, they can focus on the care and then build that claim accordingly. And flipping over to some features that are coming soon, I mentioned it earlier, but the ability to submit secondary claims is going to be coming very soon. And this is this next one is bigger than just insurance, but it gets more into analyzing how your practice is doing with kind of looking at all of your appointments data and helping you identify some, some trends. This is our analytics feature that is also coming soon. And for anyone who's actually using Jane right now, if you want some early access to it, you just need to email our support team with the subject line Analytics Beta. So if you want to dig into things like your client retention and some of your visit averages. So if you're looking at all of your visits, seeing that what percentage of those are initial appointments versus a patient coming in for the second time, third time, fourth time, you really dig in and kind of see how your clinic's doing from a bird's eye view, which is really cool. Really excited for this one. And lastly, we have an appointment, a feature that will help with appointments where there is a group that's coming in together or say a family. So if you are a family chiropractor and you have a family coming in, this feature makes it really easy to kind of book the whole family and make sure there's a slot for everybody and then receive payment for the whole family. So that one's also coming soon. Nice.

A couple of things there that I want to point out that are incredibly impactful. I just came out with a book called the Payday Practice which is all about memberships and subscription. So having the ability to bill within the Jane software for membership subscriptions I think is awesome. I think it's an area of so much opportunity for so many chiropractors out there that are 99.9% fee for service and transactional at the time. So I am totally in line with you as far as memberships are concerned. Love to hear that that feature is available. Second piece is of course this building. The secondaries love it. And the third, as you discussed, I'm kind of going out of order from the order that you said, but advanced analytics and taking a look at the dashboard and currently within Jane, I think it's really impressive on what's there currently. But being able to help chiropractors who we'd say like 70% of chiropractors are caregivers by, you know, they really love delivering hands on care. They don't fancy themselves as entrepreneurs building trillion dollar franchises. They view themselves as real caregivers in their community. So being able to have great, easy to understand, simple to access analytics I think is one of the most powerful features that any EHR system can have. Because now as a clinician, as a provider, I can make better business decisions without feeling like the business is running me. I can go in and really manage and run the business and there are so many hindrances in my opinion, with so many of the EHR companies out there where the data and analytics is either super hard to get, it's super complex to understand, or it's just not really relevant to what we're doing as providers. So some of the feedback you pointed out in terms of retention numbers, this ties in in some cases to the family booking aspects and things like that I believe are essential for practices that are really looking to build and grow and to be more stable ultimately, because you can make proactive decisions once you understand the data instead of reacting to a bank statement at the end of the month. So I commend everybody on your team for really taking that initiative because I would agree with you. I believe that's going to be one of the most powerful features moving forward. And if I had to drill down on that a little bit. You mentioned retention. What are some of the analytics that you have seen either in the current dashboard that are carrying over or within the new dashboard that maybe you're most excited about when stocks get their hands on it?

I think client retention is definitely the most exciting one. I think it's hard in your day to day to see these trends on your own. So when you get to look at your appointment data over the last year, however long you've been using Jane, there are some really interesting insights in the way that our teams design this. It makes it super simple to understand. So client retention is the one that I think most people will be excited about.

I could not agree more. For docs out there listening and watching that are probably already clamoring for where they can find out more, I'll ask you where can docs learn more? What should be their next steps if they're interested in connecting with Jane and learning about how Jane can really enhance the care they're delivering in their practice?

We love talking to you. So if you go on our website Jane app, we'd love to chat with you. If you'd book a demo with our team, we'd love to show you how Jane could help you run your practice more effectively. So Jane app or shoot us an email at Supportane app and we would love to chat. And for any existing Jane customers out there, if there's a feature that you're super excited about or would love to see in Jane, I didn't happen to mention it in our chat here we have an area where you can add your own feature requests and ideas or problems that you love to see solved. We love hearing your feedback there. So we really encourage you. If you haven't already, check out that feature request area and let us know your great ideas.

That is great stuff docs listening and watching. I'm going to encourage you. If you have not yet done a demo with Jane, please head over. We'll drop the link down of course. Course in the show notes as well. So hop over, do a demo. As John said, they have a variety of features that have come out recently, are in queue to come out and this is about optimizing the patient experience in your practice said at the beginning of this interview. I'll say it again, technology should not be a hindrance to the care you deliver. It should be an enhancement. So if you'd love to learn more, head over Book a demo with Jane and if you're a current Jane user, as John said, take them up on the offer. Be sure to put in your feature requests because clearly the Jane team and John, I'll give you and the entire team credit. You all take it seriously when people put in requests for features and I see the system constantly being improved upon, constantly being streamlined and you see that as a result of more and more docs out there utilizing Jane, being super happy with it and recommending and referring friends. So John, thanks so much for coming on and chatting today. Docs out there listening and watching. Book that demo and learn how Jane can optimize your practice.

Thanks Jeff. Really appreciate the time.

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