As a physician, you invest time and energy in keeping your patients well. But you also must do what it takes to keep your practice healthy.

Challenges such as HIPAA compliance, after-hours call management, rising costs, shrinking reimbursements and operations inefficiencies chip away at your ability to provide quality patient care. The right technology solutions, however, can reduce many of the practice hurdles you face.

While each medical practice is unique, all physicians seek ways to improve office productivity, particularly around scheduling appointments, keeping track of confidential patient medical records and billing accurately for services.

At the same time, with most practices lacking a dedicated IT professional, physicians don't want to be bothered with telephone troubles, slow Internet connectivity or costly answering services. Instead, they want their practices to thrive with minimal business interruptions. Addressing the key areas described below can make a big improvement in daily operations.

Improve Efficiency and Productivity
How can you do more with less and stay on top of ongoing financial and regulatory pressures? One answer is to find a communications provider that can meet all of your voice and data needs at a reasonable cost. Rather than taking a piecemeal approach, look for an integrated portfolio of Internet, landline and mobile communications services designed specifically for healthcare professionals. Then, should technical difficulties arise, you'll have a single contact that can get your office back up and running quickly.

Recently, I helped a growing dental practice tackle this challenge. The practice manager needed a better way to handle voice and data services, and billing for five office locations. He was dealing with five different vendors and five invoices. By switching to a single vendor, he now manages one account for all locations, views the bill online and pays through an automated arrangement. Not only did consolidation save money, it saved valuable time. And because his communications package bundles mobile and long distance minutes in the same pool, there's no concern about who's using minutes when and where, eliminating the need for tedious reconciliation.

Electronic Faxes--With HIPAA regulations demanding patient data be kept secure and private, it's crucial that faxes are protected from unauthorized viewing, delivered to the correct recipient and not lost en-route. Eliminating paper faxes and receiving documents as secure, private e-mail attachments solves this problem. E-mail faxes can easily be viewed, stored, backed-up, managed electronically and read on a mobile device remotely.

Message Services--Physician offices rely heavily on after-hours answering services to supply continuous patient care. But these services can be costly and ineffective. We recently helped a rheumatology practice find a better option-scheduled call forwarding, which forwards calls received after a certain time to an alternate number, such as a mobile phone.

The rheumatologist now easily sets his forwarding schedules and can listen to the patient's own voice, eliminating confusing messages from the answering service. Patients' urgent calls trigger a voicemail-to-page function that reaches him immediately. The rheumatologist says his practice is more responsive to patients, distinguishing him from the competition.

Other Services--Several "big business" tools are now available to physician offices, including integrated voicemail service. This service merges mobile and landline voice messaging into one easy-to-access voicemail box and enables a user to access and manage voice messages from an e-mail inbox.

When you're not in the office, enhanced mobile services let you keep in touch, view patient records, examine radiology films, schedule appointments and review other data on mobile devices such as a BlackBerry. Virtual private network technology enables secure access to e-mail, contacts and calendars--anywhere, any time.

It's important to find a service provider who understands the business of running a healthcare practice. The right technology from the right provider can enhance efficiency, easing operations and boosting the bottom line while letting you do what you do best--care for your patients.

Bill Rochfort is general manager of sales for Cbeyond, a managed services provider that delivers integrated packages of voice, mobile and broadband Internet services to healthcare businesses. He can be reached at 858/952-5002 or bill.rochfort@cbeyond.net.