2019040110:42:25

How to Implement HMS Successfully in Hospitals?

Published by: Sanjana

When compared to other industries, the healthcare sector is improving, with the help of advanced technologies like the Hospital Management System (HMS). The current medical care computerization is being hampered due to a lack of a perfect interface between computers and medical care providers.

The two main issues that are commonly faced during implementation of an HMS are as follows

1. HMS implementation begins but the users start facing issues by the end

This is generally due to the inflexibility of the HMS software, a weak administrative will, and an inexperienced team for implementation.

2. HMS implementation gets completed, but only a single part of the functionality gets implemented

This is due to non-user-friendly software or unplanned and unconfigured executions.

Pre-Implementation Assessment:

All hospital administrators who implement the HMS software in their hospitals will be apprehensive that the process may end in a partial or complete failure and measures should be taken early in order to prevent such an event from happening. The software should be well assessed before being purchased by the hospital.

Software Assessment:

Choosing the right kind of software is one of the crucial and primary steps for getting the best results.

Earlier, all HMS Software had a single development cycle starting with a single hospital being computerized by a local developer for a single hospital. However, this type of HMS development is outdated. In such cases, there is a risk of the vendor providing software that was customized for a different hospital. Implementing them may cause various issues, and it may cost more in the long run. It's better to purchase the software from a firm, that specializes in hospital management software than getting any software company to design software for your hospital.

It's better to choose software that is easy to upgrade, scalable, and not hardware intensive. Cloud-based online software is better than offline software in these aspects. The providers could also easily fix any errors or bugs in the case of online software.

Another aspect to be considered is to check if the customization of the software is done primarily through programming code or by using master tables during implementation. Hospitals may require some form of alteration to the purchased software, so as to better suit their needs, and in the case of master tables, such changes may easily be made by the hospital itself. In the case of online software, this may not matter much, as maintenance and support are provided by the software provider.

Vendor Assessment:

Only a few vendors of international or national repute can be trusted easily. A drawback with a large vendor is that they don’t always accommodate the requirements of small hospitals. In the case of small vendors, the hospital administrators may have to do thorough research to see if they are trustworthy.

An important aspect to be known is whether the current implementation team will be available during the entire implementation cycle. Checking the attrition rate of the software company, and discussions with other hospital administrators may give you an idea about this.

Visits to Hospitals with Hospital Management Systems:

A well-planned visit to hospitals where the software has been implemented will give you insights on the performance of the software, the support provided by the vendor, and if the vendor has achieved all the goals that were initially planned. To get a good picture, it's better to visit hospitals like your own, in terms of capacity, number of specialties, and number of departments, as well as hospitals that have implemented the software that you are considering. This will give you an idea, not only about the trustworthiness of the vendor but also about how well the software will be suited to your hospital.

Discussions with hospital administrators who have previously implemented the software in their hospitals will also give you good insights on the possible difficulties you may face during the implementation process, and on how to overcome them.

Getting your Hospital ready:

Problems may arise in HMS implementation, due to issues within the hospital. The lack of a systematic and uniform workflow within all the departments in the hospital may make the implementation process difficult. Information regarding the various equipment used, tests performed, schedules of doctors in different departments, etc must be readily available so that it can easily be imported into the system.

An important aspect is the cooperation of the various end-users, that is, the hospital employees. They have to provide enough awareness of the usefulness and importance of implementing the HMS software. The implementation may put additional stress on the employees until they get used to the system, and this may hamper the efforts of the hospital administration.

HMS implementation begins with a pre-implementation phase, in which software is chosen and the hospital prepares for the change, followed by the implementation phase and the post-implementation phase, in which the final kinks are ironed out. The whole process could be made smooth with a thorough pre-implementation phase.

Choosing software that is well suited to your hospital, having clearly defined workflows, and complete information about the working of the hospital will help you to easily implement the HMS in your hospital. Having a good team, and ensuring the cooperation of the hospital employees would help the hospital achieve its goals with the HMS.

Related Blogs

Hospital Management Software is considered to be the current trend and boom to every hospital administrations and management. An HMS is a web-based or computer-based software system which helps to control different complex workflows and processes which are inherent to the normal working of any hospital.

The HMS acts as the frontiers for various hospital stakeholders to access, capture, report, and manage every single information happening in the functioning of your hospital. Today let’s check how the Hospital Management System enhances your hospital quality.

Why is HMS mandatory for your hospitals and how does it improve your clinic quality?

A Hospital Management System provides you with different advantages like adaptive, innovation, affordability, and more. A quality HMS needs to have provisions for managing and documenting the hospital aspects like doctors, billing, patients, inventory, insurance, pharmacy, support staff, HR, diagnostics, radiology, reports, etc.

Some of the benefits of the HMS for your clinic include

● Quick and easy access to the records and other data of the patient.

● Automation brings efficiency

● Accuracy

● Patient satisfaction

● Speedy services

● Coordination between different departments

● Paperless record system.

Secure your data:

The Hospital Database Management System makes it unfeasible for any personnel who are unauthorized to access private and sensitive information, particularly in dealing with the records of the patients. It decreases data theft and similar possibilities and therefore you will be able to secure your data and thus an improvement in the hospital quality.

Making treatment and diagnosis simpler:

The Hospital Management System offers useful dashboards and reports, through which caregivers and doctors can have quick and simple access to the test results and records of the patients. It increases the competency of your hospital legitimately and also helps to improve your hospital quality.

Enhance quality ratings of the hospitals:

If the HMS is implemented in your hospital, then there is no worry about your clinic quality. It enhances your standing with quality circles and insurance companies significantly.

Run your hospital effectively:

The amount of effort and time you will save by implementing the Hospital Management System is surprising. These savings make for the smooth and efficient operation of your clinic.

Tracks for better financials:

Implementing a Hospital Management System in your hospital means there is a more significant benefit for the department of finance. It’s easy to track outflows, receivables, revenues, and debts better when HMS is implemented. The HMS generates a financial report that will have an accurate health picture of your hospital.

Eliminate errors:

There is a chance for many errors to occur if you are maintaining the manual or older method in your hospital. With HMS automation processes, you can easily avoid mistakes, and the workflow will go excellently when compared to the older or manual methods.

Higher patient satisfaction:

The hospital management system decreases the time taken for procedures and processes at all stages of patient interaction, namely discharge, billing, and registration, thus, it makes your clients and patients happy.

Paperless Operation:

The advent of the hospital management system is that it makes use of electronic records rather than physical files, which leads to a happier outcome when it comes to maintaining your hospital quality. It’s expected for hospitals to become paperless completely with further development in the hospital management system.

Start your research, reach for a reputable EMR vendor like MocDoc, and make the quality of your hospital rick and user-friendly.

How HMS improves the qual...

Hospital Management Software is considered to be the cur.....

Published by: Sanjana 2019093013:01:47

What is an integrated hospital management system? How could it help the hospitals?

There are multiple departments in hospitals that carry out numerous activities daily. There is a lot of communication that takes place and information to share between departments which are crucial and need to be stored in a system with a good user interface. Hospitals use heterogeneous management systems like appointment scheduling software, telemedicine software, diagnostic software, EHR software, billing software, and more. It's a tedious task to maintain all this software and make a single report from various collections. Now, this requires a huge team! But what if a single management system could replace these heterogeneous systems efficiently?

An integrated hospital management system is one such system. Like any other hospital management system, it does not just store information but also connects all the departments under a single interface. It supports the various departments of a hospital such as a laboratory, clinic, and pharmacy in a single interface, making it easy for the departments to interact and share patient information.

Interoperability is the constant chain in any hospital as on average, a patient visiting a hospital engages at least with two departments. Well, taking the chain of interoperability digital with an integrated hospital management system will help the hospital attain efficiency in its core aspects. Here are a few points on how this helps the patients and the hospital.

Patients part:
1. Appointment: Make appointment booking hassle-free by letting your patients book appointments online via the website/mobile app.
2. On the dot: Share electronic patient records with departments or patients themselves in no time.
3. Reduce no-shows: Send SMS or email reminders to your patients, reminding them of their upcoming appointments.
4. Personalized: Send health tips or diet plans to your patients based on their health conditions.
Hospitals part:
1. One for all: An integrated hospital management system will eradicate the need for different systems as it combines all the department modules.
2. Performance Report: Generate weekly, monthly, or yearly performance reports of the hospital in a snap of fingers (No! You don't need a team to do this.)
3. Reference: Makes it easy to manage and estimate referral payments to clinics and outsourced laboratory tests.
4. Marketing: Conduct medical camps remotely with the help of offline camp management modules and let your patients know through email.

Thus, integration is crucial between all the departments of the hospital owing to interoperability. Integration between the departments will take their communication on a digital pathway, making the hospital's workflow seamless and easy. Here are the various areas of integration regarding a hospital.

Hospital-Laboratory: Have you ever had a phase where the laboratory used different software from that of the hospital? If yes, then you must know how time-consuming each process with the laboratory could get. However, an integrated hospital management system will allow you to share patient health records and required tests with the laboratory. Likewise, the laboratory can send you the patient's electronic test results in no time. This eliminates paperwork and other possible manual work.

Hospital-Pharmacy: How different is a hospital’s pharmacy from a standalone pharmacy? A pharmacy integrated with a hospital can get patients' e-prescriptions from doctors and provide timely medications to the in-patients. Further, the pharmacy can even take care of the supplements that are to be provided to the OT department. This integration allows the doctor to know about the availability of medicine in the pharmacy or its alternative before prescribing it to the patients.

Hospital-Clinic: Well, parent hospitals do have multi-location clinics, and these clinics can be integrated with the hospital in a single interface, cases that need prior attention are often shifted to the hospital and this lets the hospital learn about the patient's history quickly through the health records. An integrated hospital management system allows the hospital to overlook the functioning of its multi-location clinics by just switching between the identities of the organization.

Centralized Data vs Distributed Data: (Point of discussion)

Centralized Data or Distributed Data, you have got data to handle. Data needs to be taken care of efficiently for the smooth everyday functioning of the hospital. But which is the better way to do so?

When every department is integrated into a single software, the data is centralized. Thus a patient ID once created is just carried forward by every department, whereas in the dominance of heterogeneous software, a patient has to get themselves registered, with every department attended.

Organizing data and generating revenue or performance reports is very easy when the data is centralized. Most of the integrated patient management systems have the feature of an analytic dashboard which lets the management create weekly, monthly, or yearly performance reports of the hospital. When the data is distributed, it takes a lot of time to collect and organize them. This process is quite a lengthy one and requires a huge team at work.

Cost-wise advantage: Software has different types of pricing patterns, which may be budget-friendly or not. Like subscription-based, a percent of your revenue is based on the number of patients visiting. Having different software is going to charge you in different ways and might end up very expensive too. On the other side, when just a single piece of software is in use by all the departments, you are charged by a standard pattern. This gives you the advantage of forecasting the cost you might have to endure and if it's budget-friendly

Patient Experience: Patient satisfaction is a goal that any hospital wishes to achieve. It is the key to the productivity of the hospital. Perhaps, it creates the goodwill of the hospital. But how can software keep you far from achieving this?

Turnaround time: No hospital wishes to increase a patient's turnaround time, Neither do you. But this might be happening unintentionally by the use of different software by departments. For instance, A patient has to manually take all the health records to the laboratory and get themselves registered for a test. On receiving the test results, the patient will again have to take the results to the doctor, themself. This whole process is time-consuming for the patients, and such issues can be solved by using a single software.

Technical Issues: Diving into a scenario where a hospital maintains a separate billing software. Owing to a few technical issues the software turned faulty, which caused chaos at the reception. Problems like these are Stressful for the patients and are more likely to affect the reputation of the hospital. Such scenarios could be avoided with a cloud-based Hospital Management System where the cloud has a backup cloud to ensure such nightmares don't come true.

Flexible Meeting: With all the changes the recent time has brought, Telemedicine has become a need. Patients now prefer the telemedicine facility for smaller health issues so that long and discomfort travels can be avoided. Hospitals should adapt themselves to this method of patient appointment and make sure that their software supports telemedicine. This makes things easy for patients who are old or who reside far from the hospital. And also helps the hospital in obtaining patient satisfaction.

Ease for doctors and workers inside the hospital:

Integrating every department of the hospital will ease down a lot of work for the doctors and other workers of the hospital.

Generating analytical reports with the help of a dashboard.
Reduce manual paperwork by sharing electronic health records.
Effective marketing Via email and SMS.

The right software will increase the efficiency and productivity of the hospital. Hope you found this blog on the Integrated Hospital management system insightful.

Why use an integrated hos...

What is an integrated hospital management system? How could .....

Published by: Rithika S 2021030815:40:30

Is it important for organizations like hospitals to advertise? Well, let's hope to find our answers here. Every product or service that we use in our daily life is a result of many marketing strategies. Marketing is a powerful way of educating people about your excellence, expertise and existence in regards to your field. To earn people's attention, people need to know how you can help them with their issues and to do this, marketing is very much the tool.

There are several ways to marketing and they can be divided into 2 categories:

The modern way of marketing
The traditional way of marketing

The modern way of marketing, living in an era where everything is digital, modern is nothing but digital. Online hospital marketing can connect you with people online in unexpected ways. Here are a few ways to do online hospital marketing.

Website: They say a website is the online house of any business and it for sure is. A website should people tell people everything about the hospital, and a well-structured website will always keep the traffic engaged. The names of doctors who work at the hospital with their speciality, the services provided, and sharing of testimonials will help the hospital connect with people. Most millennials tend to search for more information about the hospital online before booking an appointment. Moreover, they prefer booking appointments online.

Blogs: Lately, people have become more aware and conscious about personal health. Insightful healthcare blogs will help you connect with readers online. Studies say more than 5% of google searches are about health. Encourage your doctors to write insightful blogs on important healthcare topics that people are curious to learn.

Social media post: Social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram have the most engaging network. Online hospital marketing on these platforms can do a great profit for your organization. People online want to relate to content, so post content that you believe in, wish to raise awareness about and which will prove helpful to people. Such content will create your brand identity among huge groups of people and will reach a large audience across networks.

Video insights: Video contents are a highly engaging form of content these days. It is seen that people prefer short and informative video content more than written content. This format of content will make your network feel interactive with you.

Email and SMS: Emails and SMS are a personalized way of marketing and approaching your patients. Send them emails that they can relate to, like health tips or diet plans, or blog articles relating to their issues. Send them follow-up appointment reminders or tell them about the camps or discounts you are conducting via SMS.

In the traditional way of marketing, as a hospital, you don't just see people of one demographic but many countless demographics like different ages, genders, backgrounds, and more. And It's possible to have a demographic of people who don't belong on digital platforms, and that is literally why traditional marketing is important.

Print media: Printing in newspapers and magazines is not new, but it has still got its value. These mediums have a strong base of the audience who are regular and believe in them. Contributing health-based articles to them will give you a great reach and identity among its audience.

Camps: Camps are conducted for the greater good cause, but they also help in building brand identity and goodwill. Conduct camps like full health check-ups on World Health Day blood donation camps on World Blood Day or children's health check-up camps on Children's day. Such camps will help you connect with new people.

Standees: Stands? Really? An eye-catching illustration or quote will make its place in viewers' minds. Health-based quotes, tips, or creative illustrations on a standee will make your brand known to even people who are just reading by. Such creatives tend to stay in people’s minds much longer.

Word of mouth: Make sure to give the utmost patient satisfaction to all your patients as word of mouth can bring in new patients to your hospital, and build your reputation and goodwill. Treat your employee in the right way as they are just as important as your patients in your hospital.

Television: Television ads are usually preferred for some big announcements like branch openings. Go for television ads only when you find the real need for it as they are the costliest form of advertising. Most hospitals prefer to advertise for a month or two and advertise only in the regions they exist.

So how will these hospital marketing strategies help in scaling up the productivity of your hospital?

With every possible information available digitally on your fingertips, people want to learn about the brand, product, and service before going for it. They want to learn about your experience, knowledge, and speciality in the field. As a hospital, you need to let people learn about you and from you, and you do this through the various ways of marketing. This way, new people will prefer to walk up to you for consultation and treatment purposes, resulting in an increase in the productivity of the hospital.

10 effective hospital mar...

Is it important for organizations like hospitals to advertis.....

Published by: Rithika S 2021112418:31:34

Hospitals are rarely a single department entity. They usually span multiple specialties focusing on different treatment areas, such as pediatrics, neurosciences, gynecology, etc.

There are also various departments taking care of the day-to-day running of the hospital, such as maintenance, accounting, billing, operation theatre, and management. Each of these departments consists of many people carrying out various tasks, ranging in complexity from brain surgeries to fixing overhead lamps.

A single organization may have hospitals across multiple locations, making it difficult to manage them all. A hospital management system helps you manage the enormous complexities of efficiently managing the hospital sustainably.

Even though hospitals span several different areas, in the beginning, it usually involves only a few departments and just the primary number of people required to manage them all.

In such a case, a simple management system with the capacity to deal with relatively less data would work. But as a hospital starts growing, incorporating more specialties and treatment facilities, this system may not be able to deal with the massive flow of data.

A hospital management system could make this process much faster and easier.

As the number of departments and employees grows, the management system would also extend to accommodate the conditions created by the growth, thus aiding the development of the hospital instead of being a hindrance.

Scale up - The role of a cloud-based system

A cloud-based online system has many advantages compared to an offline system regarding scaling up. Instead of making changes in all systems in a hospital network, the differences would have to be made only by the software providers. They could easily be updated to add more departments and employees without reinstalling the updated version in all the systems in a hospital. And since the software and its interface remain the same, there is no need to allocate extra resources to train the users.

A cloud-based system would also be much more efficient in the case of hospitals in multiple locations. The data generated from all the hospitals run by the same organization could be integrated and analyzed to improve overall performance. As new sites come up, the software is updated, and the existing management network can seamlessly integrate without additional training.

This option would allow for better purchase decisions, as requirements for the entire chain of hospitals could be understood and remedied in bulk, thus helping make much better business transactions and improving efficiency for the whole network.

Resource management and reduction of wastage :

A sound hospital management system would also help prevent unwanted waste of resources. Efficient management of the various equipment and disposables inventory would cut short the resources otherwise wasted. In scaling up, there is usually an increased wastage of resources due to purchasing excess materials to prevent a shortage. With an efficient system, such wastages could easily be detected and avoided. This option could provide a smooth scale-up from a small hospital to an extensive network without excessive spending.

Scaling up - Understanding the data generated :

A common problem associated with the scaling up of any system is the overwhelming amount of data generated from the various subsystems. Every bit of data has to be analyzed and compiled in a manner that is easy to understand to make correct decisions at every corner. A scale-up could be a headache for a hospital with a large amount of data generated without an adequate system to manage the data.

An efficient hospital management system would make this entire process a cakewalk by managing the data generated in real time smoothly and quickly. In a sound hospital management system, all the data from the various departments regarding all the matters from procurement of materials, human resources, and energy requirements to billing, accounting, and inventory management is compiled and represented in a meaningful manner.

This leads to a quicker and easier decision-making process and, therefore, a more accessible, smoother, and efficient scale-up.

Management of the extra human resources required for scale-up :

The efficient running of a hospital requires that all the stakeholders play their roles, and to enable this; they should be able to manage their work quickly and intuitively. A sound hospital management system allows smooth work delegation and easy access to the information required for the task.

For example, it should allow a doctor to enter information regarding a patient and their treatment regime and enable the pharmacist to track the inventory quickly. With an efficient system, it would also be able to evaluate the work done by them. Such easy management of the entire workforce, without causing any hindrance to them, but help them with this, would enable the hospital to grow.

In short, a sound hospital management system would make it easier to scale up the hospital network by efficiently managing the resources, avoiding waste, creating an efficient workforce, and better data management. Such a system could provide hassle-free patient care, making everyone’s work much more manageable.

Scalable Hospital Managem...

Hospitals are rarely a single department entity. They usual.....

Published by: Steve 2019031619:30:08