How Guardian Medical Direction scaled the efficiency of physician oversight 20x with SignNow API

Guardian Medical Direction is a platform that enables medical oversight, as nurses are required in most states to have a physician oversee what they do. Guardian MD was founded to help nurses navigate the complexities of running their own healthcare businesses. 

Whether running an IV hydration clinic, a primary care facility, or an urgent care, nurses often need physician approval for ordering labs, medications, and exams. 

We talked to Mike DeGain, CTO of Guardian Medical Direction, to learn how their medical oversight company is addressing the paperwork process and empowering nurses to run successful businesses.

Key takeaways

• By eliminating the administrative overhead of reviewing medical documents, a medical oversight company enabled physicians to manage 20x more clinics
• Using a HIPAA-compliant electronic signature platform, Guardian Medical Direction rolled their service out in weeks versus years
• Via improved efficiency, and timely reviews and approvals, physicians are able to serve more patients and nurse practitioners are able to provide better care and see increased revenue for their businesses

The problem

In some areas, communities struggle to get medical care because there aren’t enough nearby clinics. In response, many nurses start their own businesses to help their communities access the care they need. Sometimes, nurses also open their own practices for personal reasons, like wanting flexible hours or pursuing a business venture.

However, nurses with independent practices must have a physician to oversee important paperwork, such as protocols and lab results. With a physician shortage and tight timelines, how can this approval process be made easier?

With so much paperwork and communication required between nurses and doctors, Guardian MD needed a way to address several challenges.

They asked themselves:

• How can we streamline medical document review and approval for doctors who often do this work after working their full-time jobs?
• How can we ensure that electronic signatures will carry the same legal weight as a wet signature?
• How can we ensure that we are adhering to the medical laws and regulations for each state?
• How can we streamline the review and approval process of medical documents for nurse practitioners running their own business?

Build or buy

Having an in-house development team and technical expertise, Mike and his team considered developing a HIPAA-compliant eSignature and a document collaboration tool themselves versus using an existing solution. 

They calculated the cost of development, managing the infrastructure, and ongoing maintenance and found that if they built the functionality themselves, it would take them three years to get a return on investment, which was too long for a development project. In comparison, by partnering with SignNow API, they found their time to value would be 3x faster. 

When considering the development and maintenance costs of building a solution in-house, they found that SignNow API delivered clear value over building it themselves and would significantly decrease their time to market.

The solution

Mike and his team were able to leverage the SignNow API within their own platform to achieve the user experience they were seeking. The developers found the API robust, easy to implement, and very well documented.

1. Trusted certified signatures

The healthcare industry – and specifically pharmacies – often still require a wet signature. However, SignNow API has been a valuable tool for Guardian MD because of their signature certification process. The certified signature stamps provided by SignNow API are one of the few that are trusted and accepted by pharmacies as equivalent to a wet signature.

“Enabling digital signatures for traditionally wet signature use cases has saved our doctors and clinics hundreds of hours that would have otherwise been spent downloading, signing, scanning, and sending documents. We have executed this time saving on thousands of signatures so far.”

Mike DeGain, CTO of Guardian Medical Direction

2. HIPAA compliance and security

An important feature for the Guardian MD team is the ability to store all of their signed documents in the SignNow API cloud. Because SignNow adheres to the strictest compliance standards, including HIPAA compliance, the Guardian MD team is able to rest assured that their documents are securely and correctly stored.

3. Open lines of communication

With the Guardian MD oversight platform and its integration with SignNow API, nurses can upload documents for their physician’s approval and physicians can quickly accept or reject it, leave questions or notes, and communicate back and forth until everything is resolved. Importantly, when it comes to labs, physicians are able to review the results and use SignNow to make notes and recommend that patients see the right health care provider to address their results. This added value can help improve patient outcomes. 

Another feature that is important to Guardian MD and many SignNow API users is that the tool allows you to input signature fields that match your company’s own branding. In other words, there is no obtrusive SignNow branding on any of the documents processed via Guardian MD.

“The SignNow integration truly feels like a cohesive part of our platform. The ability to sign, store, track, and approve critical legal documents and protocols to keep our clients compliant with as minimal overhead as possible has helped turn us into a leader in the remote medical oversight space.”

Mike DeGain, CTO of Guardian Medical Direction

The results

SignNow API has been a critical partner for Guardian MD and their clients. By utilizing the tool, Mike and his team have been able to see a significant ROI. SignNow API has reduced their support overhead costs and is well-priced considering its comprehensive set of features. 

Because Guardian MD has outsourced their document workflows to SignNow API, they’ve been able to take on multiple new projects, such as adding a slick telemedicine feature, which has had a tremendous impact on their revenue. 

Additionally, SignNow API gave Guardian MD the ability to fully customize the embedded signing experience to meet the needs of their users to streamline their workflow and add custom metadata. With SignNow API’s comprehensive documentation, Guardian MD was able to easily integrate eSignature into their app fast. 

For many physicians, providing oversight for nurses is a side business that earns them additional income. On their own, they can probably take on five to ten clinics before the administrative burden becomes too much. With Guardian MD integrated with SignNow API, physicians can take on upwards of 100 clinics at a time, providing them an opportunity to earn much more income and help many nurses and patients along the way.

“SignNow API has been a great value add and it’s very easy to develop against,” says Mike. “Ultimately you just want something easy to use as a developer. Avoiding the technical debt of trying to develop this service in-house has made SignNow API well worth the cost.”