Understanding Roles and Access Levels

In the world of healthcare, efficient team management is crucial for providing top-notch patient care. SigmaMD recognizes this and offers a system to categorize team members based on roles and access levels. Understanding these distinctions is key to leveraging the platform’s full potential and ensuring a smooth operational flow within your practice.

Roles Defined

SigmaMD classifies users into various roles, each tailored to the diverse functions within a healthcare setting. These roles are:

Ordering Clinician: Primarily responsible for ordering lab tests and making critical clinical decisions.

Nurse: Supports clinicians in patient care, capable of viewing patient information and assisting in administrative tasks.

Allied Health Professional: Includes a range of health professionals who provide services that support, aid, and increase the efficiency of the clinicians.

Medical Assistant: Plays a supportive role, assisting in both clinical and administrative tasks under the guidance of a clinician.

Non-clinical: Encompasses staff involved in the administrative and operational aspects of a practice without direct patient care.

Team member profile with the Role menu open, listing Ordering Clinician, Nurse, Allied Health Professional, Medical Assistant and Non-clinical

Access Levels

To complement roles, SigmaMD introduces two main access levels that determine the scope of control and visibility within the platform:

Admin: Admins possess the highest level of access. They can navigate through the entire system, making any necessary changes. This includes modifying the practice’s profile, accessing billing features, and managing team member roles (inviting new members or deactivating existing ones).

Member: Members have more restricted access. While they can perform tasks pertinent to patient care and day-to-day operations, they cannot alter the practice's profile or manage team member statuses. In Billing, Members can open Memberships, Charge Items, Shipment History and Settings; Reports, which include the invoice list, and Employers appear only when an Admin turns on those permissions. They also manage only their own team member calendar: adding calendars and changing the availability or settings of other calendars is left to admins.

Understanding and correctly assigning roles and access levels is vital for several reasons:

Security: Ensures sensitive information and critical functionalities are only accessible to authorized personnel.
Efficiency: Streamlines workflow by aligning tasks with team members' expertise and job functions.
Compliance: Maintains adherence to healthcare regulations by controlling access to patient information and financial data.

When reviewing a Member's team profile, an Admin can turn on three extra permissions:

Billing reports: view the practice's billing reports, including the invoice list.
Employers: access the Employers section.
Refunds: refund payments or mark them as refunded.

Only an Admin can change these toggles, and only on someone else's profile. If you change an Admin to Member, all three are turned off.

Access level set to Member, with the Billing reports, Employers and Refunds toggles

By carefully assigning roles and access levels, practices can optimize their use of the SigmaMD platform, ensuring that each team member has the appropriate tools and information to contribute effectively to patient care and practice management. Remember, thoughtful management of roles and access levels is a cornerstone of seamless practice operations in the digital age of healthcare.