2019032111:58:21

How to Invest in a Hospital Management System - Understanding the Pricing

Published by: Steve

One of the first things that come into our mind before we decide to purchase something, is the cost. Whether it be a Netflix subscription or a new bike, or a business-related purchase, the price plays an important role. While acquiring Hospital Management Software also, pricing is an important factor to be considered. Hospital management software being much more complex than a movie ticket or an automobile, the costs that are involved in it are also a bit more complicated. We have previously discussed the various advantages of using hospital management software. Here let’s break down the costs involved in implementing it.

How the price is determined - The Number of Beds

Cost of a hospital management system mainly depends on the number of beds in the hospital. As a rule of thumb, we can say that the price goes up as the number of beds increase.

So generally as a hospital grows and develops, a need for a system with higher capacity comes up. This in gives you two options; either get high capacity, a non-upgradable system or get a system with the capacity you require, but which can be upgraded for better features. The latter is preferable, as in the former you end up paying for features you may not require currently.

Online or Offline System

Whether the system is online or offline brings up different kinds of expenditures.

Generally for an offline software, the firm that provides the system will simply install the software for a one time fee. The hospital will have to acquire servers by itself and manage its own data, install the cables, network its systems, and generally, have to deal much more into the hardware aspect than online software. In such cases, extra costs other than the cost of the software itself will come up. Also, a dedicated team for managing the system will be required for general maintenance.

Online systems generally simplify these functions, as the firm providing the system will be dealing with software aspect, as well as most of the hardware aspects(such as servers, etc. Computer systems and other hardware will have to be purchased by the hospital as required). In this case, the system exists like a subscription service, where for an annual or monthly fee, the firm providing the system will maintain and manage the servers and the system. There’s much less hardware to be acquired from other sources. A simple PC connected to the internet can easily access the system. The human resources required from the hospital for maintaining the system is much less.

So in general Online Systems are more cost-effective, especially in the long run.

Implementation Cost

Implementation cost is another aspect to be considered while implementing a hospital management system. If an existing software has to be replaced by new software, the data from the old system will have to be imported into the new system. The cost involved in this, as mentioned above, will depend on the amount of data, calculated as number of beds. If the hospital has been storing all the information in paper format, resources may be needed to enter this data to the system. Implementation costs also involve setting up access for various doctors and departments.

The implementation also requires providing training for various employees, which will be different for different departments. It is important to ensure that the training is included in the implementation cost while choosing the system.

Other Factors

A good hospital management system would offer all the features that are generally required. The software can differ in their level of sophistication, from simple accounting software to software that provides updates patients using an app or SMS. The price can vary according to the level of sophistication. Most software firms offering hospital management software are willing to provide additional features, but this usually comes at an additional price, depending on the resources required

Simple software is easily available for a lower cost, but as the functionalities required increases, the price also naturally increases.

Another factor that may bring up extra cost is the technical support provided by the companies. All though most online systems get support throughout the subscription period, in the case of offline systems, enquiries have to be made to know if the additional cost may be incurred for support.

As mentioned in previous blogs, the possibility of upgrades has to be considered. Online systems cost less for upgrades, as the hospital expands, and for better features. Considering this, online systems may turn out to be cost-effective in the long run.

Overall, the costs involved could be divided into implementation costs and maintenance cost, both of which are dependant on the number of beds. For an offline software, an annual or monthly software subscription fee have to be considered, which may or may not cover the implementation and maintenance cost.

The economic benefits of getting an offline software and investing on servers and hardware and that of getting an online software and paying an annual subscription fee have to be compared, which could differ for different hospitals. The Hospital Management Software being a long term investment, saving up by getting a software with fewer features, may cost you a lot more with frequent expensive upgrades required as the hospital grows. Additional costs that may arise in the form of support, server maintenance, extra features, possible upgrades have to be looked into while making a decision.

The Hospital Management Software being a long term investment, saving up by getting the software with fewer features may cost you a lot more with frequent expensive upgrades required as the hospital grows.

Related Blogs

Hospital Management System is used to take the data from the patients and then store it for later use. The main goal of the Hospital Management System is to accurately treat as well as decrease overtime pay.

There are various features included in the HMS. Some of the system functions include Registration, Patient checks, Report generation, and more. In this blog, let's check out the functional and non-functional requirements of the Hospital Management System in depth.

Functional Requirements:

There are a lot of software requirements specifications included in the functional requirements of the Hospital Management System, which contains various processes, namely Registration, Check, Report Generation, and Database.

Registration Process of SRS (Software Requirements Specification)

● Adding Patients: The Hospital Management enables the staff at the front desk to include new patients in the system.

● Assigning an ID to the patients: The HMS enables the staff at the front desk to provide a unique ID for each patient and then add them to the record sheet of the patient. The patients can utilize the ID throughout their hospital stay.

Check Out of SRS:

● Deleting Patient ID: The staff in the administration section of the ward can delete the patient ID from the system when the patient checks out from the hospital.

● Adding to the beds available list: The Staff in the administration section of the ward can put the bed empty in the list of beds available.

Report Generation of SRS:

● Information of the Patient: The Hospital Management System generates a report on every patient regarding various information like the patient's name, Phone number, bed number, the doctor's name whom it assigns, ward name, and more.

● Availability of the Bed: The Hospital Management system also helps in generating reports on the availability of beds regarding information like bed numbers unoccupied or occupied, ward name, and more.

Database of SRS:

● Mandatory Patient Information: Every patient has some necessary data like phone number, first and last name, personal health number, postal code, country, address, city, 'patient's ID number, etc.

● Updating information of the Patient: The hospital management system enables users to update the information of the patient as described in the mandatory information included.

Non Functional Requirements

There are a lot of software requirements specifications included in the non-functional requirements of the Hospital Management System, which contains various processes, namely Security, Performance, Maintainability, and Reliability.

Security:

● Patient Identification: The system needs the patient to recognize herself or himself using the phone.

● Logon ID: Any users who make use of the system need to hold a Logon ID and password.

● Modifications: Any modifications like insert, delete, update, etc. for the database can be synchronized quickly and executed only by the ward administrator.

● Front Desk Staff Rights: The staff at the front desk can view any data in the Hospital Management system, and add new patient records to the HMS but they don't have any rights to alter any data in it.

● Administrator rights: The administrator can view as well as alter any information in the Hospital Management Software.

Performance:

● Response Time: The system provides acknowledgment in just one second once the 'patient's information is checked.

● Capacity: The system needs to support at least 1000 people at once.

● User-Interface: The user interface acknowledges within five seconds.

● Conformity: The system needs to ensure that the guidelines of the Microsoft accessibilities are followed.

Maintainability:

● Back-Up: The system offers efficiency for data backup.

● Errors: The system will track every mistake as well as keep a log of it.

Reliability:

● Availability: The system is available all the time.

Hope you got a clear idea of the functional and non-functional requirements and the features required by the hospital. Any other queries on the topic are welcome.

The Functional and Nonfun...

Hospital Management System is used to take the data from the .....

Published by: Sanjana 2019081414:40:25

Inspiring patients to reach your hospital is not easy. It is significant to raise your patient base if you think you have to bring justice to all the pennies you have invested in your hospital. Effectively marketing your hospital can help you to bring much profit. You need to make sure that the marketing you do for your hospital should not be controlled by sales support or brand building. The important thing is that you need to make a positive connection with the terms of your patients.

Hospital Marketing has seen a tremendous change over the past few years, and some medical facilities are making use of hotel-like comforts to pamper and attract potential patients. In this blog, we will deal with the useful tips you can follow for marketing your hospital.

Create a responsive website:

The most important thing every patient does while choosing a hospital is that they go entirely through the website unless and until your hospital is located nearby to their location. Significantly, you make a responsive website with useful health information rather than build a website that displays information about your team or hospital. It would be good if you listed healthcare information so that patients themselves can take care of their families and themselves during an urgency.

Make use of SEO:

9 out of 10 people look for affordable or best hospitals online and know about the hospital, the doctor's availability, and other related information before merely visiting it. If you need to get listed while you search for the best healthcare clinic or practices, you need to make sure to use the power of SEO. The content editor and web developer focus on the effective keywords for your hospital to be listed at the top of the search engine results. You can hire an experienced SEO consultant and make the process more productive, more comfortable, and affordable.

Ensure your patients say Wow on your healthcare:

Branding is not just what you say about yourself to your customers. It's something that the patient or people say about you and your healthcare. Improve patient care, and make sure they keep your healthcare and treatment in mind for a long time. Ensure to provide them with attention and care so that they will speak for you and recommend you to their friends and family members too. Word of Mouth is the crucial thing you need to focus on.

Showcase your positives:

Show up your excellent work through videos, patient stories, testimonials, etc. on LCDs in your hospital waiting for areas so that people and patients visiting your website or hospital will come to know about you. Also, don't forget to post on social media, and talk about breakthrough treatments in conferences, public forums, and interviews.

Use Social Media effectively:

Social Media is one of the essential ways through which you can make everything possible. Social media websites like Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, Linkedin, and Pinterest, can effectively improve the number of patients visiting your hospital as well as those is the best place where you can create brand awareness by choosing the targeted audiences and attracting them to visit your clinic.

Utilize Internal Marketing too:

Every employee in your hospital is the spokesperson. Grab your HR head to make use of it, create the experience of the employees at your clinics, and make them say positive things about the hospital.

Shoot Emails:

Emails are an efficient and powerful thing when it comes to marketing. Make sure your company's IT team maintains the email list of subscribers and shares relevant and positive information emails regarding the illness of the patient. It indicates that you have proper care for your patients even after they leave your hospital. Maintaining a good and effective relationship and communication with high-value, helpful, and useful information is key to developing a powerful hospital brand.

Bottom Line:

Show your society and patients in general that you have excellent care about their well-being and health. Also, show them you do not need them to go to a stage where they don't want to go to the hospital next time.

For More details Visit MocDoc Hospital Information System.

Seven effective tips for ...

Inspiring patients to reach your hospital is not easy. It is .....

Published by: Sanjana 2019083015:33:15

Aravind Kejriwal recently directed the health officials in Delhi to develop a hospital management system of global standards. While hospital management systems have been in use for a while, there are currently no rules or regulations that lay down the standards for them in India. In the US electronic health records are regulated by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA Act).

In India, even though only the IT Act of 2000 applies for electronic health records, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare have recognized the need for electronic health records and periodically issues standards for them, for the purpose of promoting interoperability, technical innovation, participation by vendors and other stakeholders, and to support the evolution and timely maintenance of adopted standards.

Besides these guidelines, some other key features also play a key role in making a hospital management system best suited for the Indian healthcare sector. Let’s see what the specific requirements for a hospital management system in India are.

Aadhar as an identifying document.

According to the recommendations by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the electronic health record of a patient must have the provision to include the UIDAI Aadhar number as the preferred identifier. In case Aadhar information is unavailable, the ministry recommends the use of a local identifier (as per the scheme of the healthcare service provider) and a photo ID issued by the Central or State government. The system should have a provision to accept a minimum of two IDs when an Aadhar ID is not available. In the case of unidentified patients, a local identifier may be used and confirmed identifiers inserted later when available. The government recently opened doors for integrating Aadhar with any software, but the software needs to meet certain criteria. While the recommendations are not implemented on a mandatory basis, it may become so in the future and therefore it is better to get software that follows them.

Support for GST

The Government of India recently passed the Goods and Services Act(GST) and many healthcare services come under its ambit. One of the important and commonly used aspects of hospital management software is billing. There is software that carries out the sole purpose of billing, while most hospital database management systems come integrated with it. With the implementation of GST, along with other service providers, healthcare providers such as hospitals and clinics are required to comply with the norms of GST. So it is important that hospital management software is able to handle the billing according to GST norms, and integrated with GST filing software.

NABH accreditation

Formed in 2005, the National Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers is part of the Quality Council of India and is the principal accreditation for hospitals in India. NABH accreditation is becoming more and more important with the rise in medical tourism and patient awareness about their rights. Unlike ISO certification, NABH accreditation is specific to the healthcare industry and focuses on competency in terms of staff, equipment, premises, etc. For NABH accreditation of a hospital, the information management system of the hospital should meet the necessary criteria. This includes that the records of every patient are complete and accurate. It is necessary that the policy measures are in place to ensure data integrity, confidentiality and security. A hospital management system plays a crucial role in this. An HMS that can safely manage the patient data in a safe and secure manner, and keep it updated in a timely manner can make this process much easier. The HMS must assure data redundancy and integrity and should be secure against data loss or theft, for the hospital to easily achieve NABH accreditation. The HMS system must be capable of generating the data points that must be submitted for NABH accreditation.

Sending info to local government

Hospitals have to send certain information, such as birth rates and death rates, to the government periodically. This is required for keeping track of the population and related statistics. Sometimes during a disease outbreak, government health officials will need accurate data regarding the affected individuals to tackle the issue effectively. One of the primary functions of a hospital management system is the effective management of data. It should be capable of storing, retrieving and updating the information easily. With a system that can easily sort through the relevant data, the required data can be collected and sent to health officials easily and in a timely manner. Without an effective system, the hospital staff will have to manually go through a mountain of data, wasting time and resources.

For more info, visit MocDoc Healthcare Solution.

Capabilities desired for ...

Aravind Kejriwal recently directed the health officials in De.....

Published by: Steve 2019071814:51:16

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