Documentation is the bane of existence for all medical practitioners. 😤 Every year, medical providers are being asked to see more patients and meet more rigorous and detailed documentation requirements

Dr. Laurence Beer is always looking for ways to improve not just his processes—but the processes of all the doctors and nurses he works with as well. He is the Medical Director of Compliance for Transitional Care Physicians of America (TCPA), so he has seen first-hand how the pressure of increased documentation requirements in the last few years has affected his team of healthcare professionals.

In the medical world, efficiency is everything. It seems that every year doctors and nurses are being asked to see more patients. So anything we can do to squeeze efficiency out of our processes is really valuable to us.

One area Dr. Beer identified they could save time? Documentation. TCPA providers write notes after every patient encounter using an electronic medical record (EMR) system. But while the software they work with has some basic functionality to help them write notes faster, it isn’t always the easisest use.

All medical practices rely on electronic medical records. But one of the problems is that they have varying degrees of usability. Some of them are really horrible and clunky. The one we use has some basic functionality to speed up documentation with shortcut keys—but it’s many mouse clicks to get to that, and it can be cumbersome to write new ones.

For example, the notes on a physical exam at the TCPA might start with: “Well-nourished, elderly male, in no acute distress.” But to insert the shortcut key for that line within their EMR would take a physician or nurse up to six mouse clicks. (Six!) Dr. Beer knew there had to be a better way…

It just occurred to me: ‘Why is it so time consuming and unfriendly to do this?’ And I thought, ‘Gosh, isn’t there someone out there who has a standalone product that solves this problem?’

Thankfully, Magical does what clunky EMR software doesn’t. ✨ Dr. Beer quickly discovered that this simple Chrome extension could save his team a lot of time and note-writing headaches…

After a couple of Google searches, Dr. Beer discovered Magical. At first, he thought it seemed too good to be true. Could a simple Chrome extension actually work within their existing EMR software? Would it expand text shortcuts quickly enough for the doctors and nurses who would be using it dozens of times a day? He decided to try it out for himself to find out.

When I found Magical, I was wondering if it would work within our software. So, I installed it on the Chrome browser and I was shocked at how well it worked. I realized all of this stuff we’d been doing with the software built into our electronic medical records could be done so much more efficiently using Magical.

Dr. Beer especially loved Magical variables, which allow him to automatically fill in blanks within his notes for patient details like their name and age. He showed his boss, who also quickly got on board. (“What do you mean, it’s free?!”) They called a group meeting to show the rest of the physicians and nurses how it works and, before long, the entire company was using Magical shortcuts to improve their efficiency.

What I can do in Magical with a single mouse click used to take five or six mouse clicks. Which doesn’t sound like a huge thing—except when you multiply that by 30 patients a day, and then multiply that by now over 100 practitioners. You’re talking thousands of mouse clicks a day.

But it would be no good if 100 different practitioners started using 100 different shortcuts for their notes. Dr. Beer says that in order to meet strict healthcare regulations, they also needed to improve their documentation for consistency and compliance purposes.

That’s why the introduction of teams in Magical has been such a game-changer. Now, the leadership team at the TCPA can share a standardized list of shortcuts for every healthcare worker to use.

The medical field is so highly regulated. They regulate down to the word what you’re allowed to say sometimes, for the purposes of documentation and billing. So the ability for leadership to vet phrases that are useful to the practice and disseminate to everybody with a single click has been a huge deal for us.

Over the last two years, the team at TCPA has saved hundreds of thousands of hours thanks to Magical. ⏳ That’s not just better for the doctors and nurses who use it every day—it’s better for their patients, as well.

Dr. Beer credits Magical for giving back his team so much valuable time. He says around 70% of the healthcare practitioners on their team are now using it on a daily basis, and that number is sure to grow as they continue to find new ways to use the software.

I use Magical 100% of the days I work. I definitely use the variables—I was using them just 20 minutes ago. Personally, Magical saves me about an hour a day. Across the company, it’s saved us thousands of hours at this point, after two years of using it.

In particular, Dr. Beer says the ability to share message templates and shortcuts to specific sub-teams is something they’re just starting to explore. He says the team at TCPA is thinking about how they might set up different departments within the company on Magical to unlock even more efficiencies and time-savings.

One of the things my boss was excited about was the ability to create multiple teams. Because we also have a back office who manages all the administrative work. And they don’t need the same phrases the clinicians need—so now we can set them up with their own shortcuts to start getting more efficient there as well.

But at the end of the day, Dr. Beer says that you can’t argue with the value they’ve already gotten from such a simple and unassuming Chrome extension. His recommendation? Try it for yourself to see what Magical can do for you. (Editor’s Note: This is not an official doctor’s prescription. 😉)

Nobody wants to go to school for many years just so they can be a transcriptionist and type out the same phrases 30 times a day. If you find yourself typing the same thing repeatedly in your job—I highly recommend you look into Magical. It’s a big time-saver and very easy to use.

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