The average professional uses 10,000 sheets of paper per year, which equates to a stack about 3 ½ feet tall (or 104 cm). In fact, if you stacked up all the paper used just in U.S. businesses every year, the pile would be 18,000 times as high as Mount Everest and would reach nearly halfway to the moon. 

 Does your hearing clinic use paper documents for customer records, inventory, marketing, invoicing, insurance reimbursement, and other tasks? If so, it likely takes considerable time and effort to manage all this paper: sorting, filing, and organizing it.

With paper systems, administrative tasks that should be quick and easy – like scheduling, appointment reminders, medical files, or marketing efforts – require pulling documents from files, manually making phone calls, sending communications by mail, and constantly updating paperwork. There’s a better way to run your business!  

This means no piles of paper teetering on your desks, no overflowing file cabinets, no losing important documents, and no time-consuming manual mailings.

Technology has made it easy (and secure) to go paperless, yet many audiology retailers haven’t made the switch. Perhaps they’re overwhelmed by the thought of transitioning to a cloud-based Practice Management Software, or they think a paperless system is unrealistic for their clinic.

Today’s Practice Management Softwares offer so many benefits that it’s well worth it to ditch the paper and go digital. And you already have the necessary tools – laptops and PCs – to do so. Let’s review the key benefits of going paperless.

Manually trying to manage papers is messy and time-consuming. It can be incredibly stressful to try and find a specific document in an overflowing file cabinet or in a towering mess of paperwork on a sloppy desk. Disorganization can seriously impede your team’s productivity. What a waste of time! 

Going paperless – and using a PMS – will help your hering clinic get organized. You’ll never have to worry about important documents getting lost or inadvertently thrown away. Also, be aware that customers may notice a cluttered, disorganized workspace and they will be unimpressed if your hering clinic is a huge mess.

They may worry about security and confidentiality breaches if they see piles of customer records stacked haphazardly around the hering clinic’s examination rooms. An uncluttered, paperless office is more professional (and reassuring!) for your customers.   

All Auditdata systems – including Manage – are fully cloud-based. Having centralized access to your files will help facilitate collaboration, whether you have one clinic or many. Electronic documents are instantly available to everyone who needs them, which boosts productivity.

Take scheduling, for instance. Employees from any center can access and update schedules for audiologists, exam rooms, and equipment. And, if your center is closed due to inclement weather, a COVID outbreak, or for any other reason, your staff can securely access the schedule from home, and easily contact customers to reschedule appointments.

Using an integrated, centralized PMS is much more effective and efficient than leaving files on colleagues’ desks, writing schedule changes on post-It notes, or insisting that one person manage paper schedules for multiple clinics and audiologists.   

When using paper systems, employees spend considerable time organizing, filing, and searching for documents. There’s also a lot of room for human error. When you transition from paper systems to a digital PMS, your team will spend less time on busywork – like filing customer records and searching for missing documents – and can focus more time and energy on critical, value-add tasks instead.

Digital systems let employees fill out information quickly and accurately, reducing errors and redundancies, and centralizing key data. Also, many businesses worldwide learned that digital systems were crucial during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent shutdowns.

While we hope the worst of the COVID pandemic is behind us, we now know how critical it is to be able to operate remotely at a moment’s notice. An electronic system is far more useful than a paper-based system during remote operations.  

While it’s true that your hearing clinic will be investing money in digital solutions like a PMS, you’ll also be saving considerable funds elsewhere. Hearing clinics that rely on paper documents spend money on paper, printer ink, toner, printer maintenance, postage, and more.

When using paper systems, your hearing clinic is paying for employees’ time to do clerical work manually. When you pivot to digital solutions, your staff can focus on doing more value-add work to boost your organization’s bottom-line.  

Storing confidential customer information, including their health history and financial details, on paper can be a significant liability for your clinic. Sensitive paper files can easily be compromised, misplaced, destroyed, or stolen. Your security system should be more advanced than a locked filing cabinet and a paper shredder.

Auditdata’s software solutions are ISO certified, and we adhere to the highest safety standards globally, including GDPR. Our system is hosted on Microsoft Azure, one of the most secure hosting platforms in the world. We offer the highest levels of data security so our clients can avoid security and privacy breaches, allowing them to safely store confidential information – such as patient data and financial details – on our system.

Our clients can use our fine-grain access control to determine the information their users can see, for an additional level of security. For example, a hearing clinic can set it up so their finance department can see all accounting information across the organization, but they can’t access patients’ health records. Conversely, their audiologists can access patient data, but not the company’s financial information.

We’re the only audiology software company offering this elite level of security and compliance. Cloud-based technology also provides back-up in case of an emergency. If your hearing clinic experiences a natural disaster, such as a flood or fire, you won’t lose any information, as you would with paper records.  

A paperless clinic produces less waste – and has a much smaller carbon footprint – than clinics that use paper systems. Paper can negatively impact the environment by contributing to greenhouse gas production and deforestation. Some inks and toners are made from nonrenewable resources and may contain potentially harmful chemicals that, if disposed of improperly, could pollute water, soil, and other natural resources.

Your clinic can become more environmentally friendly by reducing the amount of paper, ink, and toner that you use. This effort can also help your brand image since many people choose to support sustainable businesses.   

Hearing clinics can improve their marketing efforts immensely using Manage. For instance, you can create more targeted campaigns – using relevant metrics – for more effective lead generation, sales efforts, and retention.

You’ll also be much more efficient sending out marketing materials electronically vs. sending paper documents via the mail. Digital systems will allow you to better track, analyze, and optimize marketing efforts to maximize successes.  

Going paperless offers numerous (and significant) benefits, such as providing centralized access to data, streamlining processes, increasing security, and reducing tedious manual tasks, which will make your clinic more efficient, accurate, streamlined, and productive.

Transitioning to a paperless system doesn’t have to be intimidating. Learn more about the benefits of using Manage here. And schedule a free demo of Auditdata Manage to learn more about how this innovative, integrated system can help your hearing care center enjoy these many benefits.