Trusted Doctors Optimizes Patient Engagement Workflows with DocuSign and Kno2

For any medical practice, building a solid base of satisfied customers has always depended on providing compassionate attention and personalized care to every patient. With a history stretching back more than 50 years, Trusted Doctors has grown into one of Virginia's largest and most acclaimed pediatric medical groups by doing just that. Today, the group encompasses 10 separate practices, with over 100 doctors and practitioners providing care in 13 locations across Northern Virginia and Maryland.

In a half century’s time, a great deal has changed for medical practices, including the level of documentation expected of patients to comply with governmental and insurance company regulations. Typically, this has taken the form of printed pages filled out in a waiting room—adding to patient frustration while consuming valuable face-to-face time with their care provider. 

The viability of this paper form paradigm was further challenged during the COVID-19 pandemic, as concepts like “touch-free” and “drive-through” increasingly penetrated the healthcare world. “We needed a contactless way for patients to sign documents so we didn't have to pass around paper and pens, spreading germs,” recalled Sean Murphy, IT Infrastructure at Trusted Doctors. Murphy found the solution—and bridged the gap to build a connection to the practice’s EHR system—by tapping the combined power of DocuSign and Kno2.

Adopting a contactless e-signature solution with DocuSign in record time

As the pandemic brought many routine office visits to a halt in the spring of 2020, Trusted Doctors quickly ramped up telemedicine to provide a safe and convenient channel for patients to get much-needed personal attention. With social distancing guidelines and public apprehension of virus exposure stretching into the fall, the practice decided to bring its vital annual flu vaccination program outdoors with a drive-through shot clinic. But clearly, the usual “take this clipboard” routine for gathering the required documentation and signatures wouldn’t work for carloads of families snaking through a parking lot in vehicles.

Pressed for a fast, sure-fire tool for managing e-signatures and documents, Murphy turned to DocuSign. DocuSign Professional Services was instrumental in getting Trusted Doctors’ deployment effort off the ground quickly—but with the depth of documentation available through DocuSign University, Murphy soon found he could be self-sufficient. “Once they showed us how to do it, we figured it out for ourselves, and then we've been independent ever since,” he recalled. Ultimately, Trusted Doctors had DocuSign up and running in less than a month.

Using Kno2 to complete the circuit back to Trusted Doctors’ EHR system

While eSignature alone was sufficient to send out documentation packets and collect the necessary signatures, Murphy realized he could streamline the process by automating the connection between DocuSign and Trusted Doctors’ EHR system, eClinicalWorks*. He turned to the Interoperability as a Service (IaaS) leader, Kno2, and in under two weeks, Murphy implemented a solution that automatically routes completed DocuSign packets back to their EHR system through a direct provider-to-provider (P2P) secure messaging link. Once received within the EHR system’s dedicated P2P inbox, the completed documents can be forwarded to the appropriate provider with just a few clicks.

Combined, DocuSign, Kno2 and the EHR system work together to facilitate a seamless process for Trusted Doctors’ drive-through clinics:

1. Interested patients’ names, date of birth, and email addresses are gathered through a web survey form and exported in a spreadsheet
2. Using the bulk import feature, the patient information is uploaded into DocuSign and the appropriate document envelopes are generated
3. DocuSign sends out each patient’s envelope via a bulk send
4. DocuSign receives the completed documents and automatically transfers them to Kno2
5. Kno2 uses the EHR’s secure P2P (provider-to-provider) messaging tool to upload the completed documents directly into a user account created specifically for receiving documents from Kno2
6. Documents received in the special P2P inbox are assigned to the correct provider within the EHR

At the clinics, providers needed only to verify the identity of the patients and provide the vaccines; no paperwork was necessary. “They didn’t have to leave their car; it really worked out,” Murphy said. The process worked so well that the medical group reused it later for COVID-19 swab testing, and later, for the COVID-19 vaccine itself.

Building on success to realize lasting process efficiencies

The pandemic may have been the impetus for launching DocuSign, but now having experienced the benefits of paperless processes, Murphy isn’t planning to go back to old ways of doing business. “I think we've always been looking for ways to push information to our patients prior to their appointments and go more paperless and contactless,” he said. “We just never really had a solution like DocuSign before.”

In the near future, Trusted Doctors plans to expand its use of DocuSign envelopes for all in-office visits, and Murphy aims to train front desk employees to enter patient information directly into DocuSign as they schedule appointments—so that documents will go out to patients in real time rather than in batches. 

*eClinicalWorks does not sponsor or endorse DocuSign