2019051816:52:15

What are the different types of healthcare software?

Published by: Steve

The healthcare sector is facing pressure to move to digital systems, both from regulatory authorities and from the general public. The government is pushing for digital systems so as to make the functioning of hospitals and other healthcare systems more transparent. The public is becoming more aware of their healthcare requirements and options and is demanding more efficient and accessible healthcare systems, and the healthcare providers are becoming more aware of this need. Many healthcare IT firms are trying to fulfill this need, and are providing a variety of software services. Let’s try to understand the different types of healthcare software used by various healthcare providers.

EHR

Electronic health records or EHRs are used for storing patient information in a digital manner. It is used by hospitals and clinics to store the complete medical history of a patient. Government health regulators in many countries are moving forward with plans to make electronic health records mandatory.

These records provide a secure and easily accessible way of storing medical records compared to paper-based records. Electronic records do not have the risk of loss of medical history or being illegible or destroyed over a long period of time. It also prevents duplication of medical records, since there is only one file that is modified over time.

Electronic health record software is used in both clinics and hospitals and usually comes integrated with hospital management software and practice management software.

Practice management software ( PMS)

Practice management software or clinic management software is used for managing clinics. Depending on the requirement of the clinic, software with various combinations of features is available. Generally, they contain appointment management, billing, and electronic health records. Software with integrated lab and pharmacy management features is also available if there are labs or pharmacies associated with the clinic. Practice management software helps to streamline the workflow of a clinic, gets error-free documentation, manages appointments and billing, and makes the system more efficient.

Specialized systems are available for dental care, ophthalmology, and other specialty clinics, with customized prescription management and health records.

Queues in the clinic can also be managed by the system, either on the basis of tokens or on the basis of appointments

Hospital Management System ( HMS )

Hospital management system has almost all the features described above, and more. They are a fully integrated system capable of managing the entire hospital. They are capable of managing appointments and electronic health records for both inpatient and outpatient departments. They are used for managing doctors’ schedules, surgeries, other procedures, and all the aspects related to them. They are also capable of handling the labs and pharmacies attached to the hospitals. The HMS systems can also manage the rooms, marking rooms as occupied, unoccupied, undergoing maintenance, etc, making it easy to allocate rooms and beds for patients.

Hospital management systems are often linked to the websites of the hospitals and patients can use them to book their appointments, get access to their health records and treatment plans, and manage their prescriptions. These days they also come with apps for patients that aid the patients in these same tasks much more easily through their smartphones. Alerts are provided through SMS services for follow-up procedures, vaccinations, etc in some hospital management systems.

Due to the integrated nature of the HMS, all the procedures done in various departments of the hospitals, all the tests done, medicines administered, and prescribed are tracked, thus allowing easy comprehensive billing.

Laboratory information management systems ( LIMS )

Lab information management systems, as the name implies, are used to manage the functions of a lab. It will have provisions for sample collection, inventory management, accounting functions, and provisions for machine interfacing with the lab equipment.

A good lab information system will provide full automation and ensure error-free results, with alerts for abnormal results. With machine interfacing, data from the instruments in the lab are directly read by the software, and accurate records are made against the sample data. In the case of LIMS systems integrated with the hospital management system, provisions may be there to add the test results to the patient records. Stand-alone systems are also available for use by independent laboratories.

The Laboratory information management system helps lab technicians to achieve a smooth workflow and better quality control. From the point at which the sample is collected, till the results are delivered, samples are tracked using the software, which means that any technician in the lab can find out what to do with a sample at every step of the way, thus avoiding issues with sample management. The system also prevents errors, thus improving the credibility of the lab.

Billing software

Billing software has been used as part of hospitals and clinics ever since accounting went digital. Even before EHRs came, accounting software was being used in many hospitals.

Billing software helps to manage insurance claims and provides a smooth accounting of medical bills. The entire medical costs of all the patients can be easily accessed and organized in an efficient manner using billing software. Though they come along with hospital and practice management systems these days, they are still available as stand-alone systems.

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How could healthcare solutions be investments? Well, investments are about profitable returns but in any form. Along with automating the workflow patterns, healthcare solutions also connect you with your patients effectively, for instance, sending healthcare tips or sending appointment reminders via email and SMS, benefitting not only the organization but also patients. They have made work easier to handle all along the workflow, increasing productivity and patient satisfaction.

Here's how healthcare solutions benefit the end-users...

Healthcare Solutions for the front desk:

From tele-appointment to billing, the front desk is the busiest area, with piles of work accumulating every minute. Here is how healthcare solutions have made it possible for them to break down tasks and work more efficiently.

Appointment management:

Create patient IDs and schedule appointments in a snap with automated steps. With appointment calendars designed for the front desk, stay posted with all the appointments falling for the day or week later and send patients automated messages on their upcoming appointments.

Billing Management:

Let your patients do some billing. With latest healthcare software allows your patients to pay you online via patient apps, where they can view treatment summaries, and insurance plans or book video consultation appointments and make payments.

Healthcare Solutions for Doctors:

Doctors are the principal end-users of healthcare solutions. These solutions keep doctors from doing those repetitive, tedious tasks with their automated functions, eventually reducing stress for them.

Patient charts:

Wouldn't it be such a time saver to be served all the information you need right at your desk? Have all the patient information you need like, history, allergies, past surgeries, treatment, medication, etc., on a snap.

Cross communication:

Share patients' electronic health records with patients themselves or other departments right from your desk! With all the medicines updated in these systems, select the medicines and send e-prescriptions to your patients and pharmacy. Go paperless, and reduce manual work.

Healthcare Solutions for Frontline Workers:

Taking care of so many things at once, it's a tough job that nurses do! Here's how healthcare solutions help nurses balance their work and be a perfectionist.

OT and post OT scenarios:

From arranging everything required in OT to timely checkups and providing prescribed medications post-OT, nurses take extensive care of the patients. With access to patient healthcare records, nurses can be prepared with the procedures and every individual patient's requirements for the day.

User Interface:

Healthcare software has an easy-to-understand user interface allowing nurses to complete tasks right from one place. Along with accessing patient health records, nurses can send e-prescriptions to the pharmacy, access patient test records from laboratories for procedures, and update the amount of inventory available.

Healthcare Solutions for Owners:

Owners ensure the smooth and progressive running of the organization. They are more concerned about the quality of experience, costs, and revenue. Now, how are healthcare solutions an investment for them?

Cost and Revenue:

Most healthcare software has real-time analytical dashboards showing weekly, monthly, half-yearly, or even yearly performance and revenue of the organizations in a snap of the fingers. These features help in quick decision-making and dissolve the need for a special team to combine data.

Efficiency:

By implementing healthcare software, considerable parts of the workflow get automated, reducing stress in work, chances of manual error, and patient turnaround time. With lesser weight, employees tend to work seamlessly faster, and clearer, and attend to patients better.

With the increase in data in the healthcare industry, it's easy for organizations to get chaotic if data is not arranged, secured, and handled properly. Healthcare solutions do not just benefit one division of the hospital/clinic but all the divisions and make data management easy. The various advanced features and modules make sure all the activities are seamlessly carried out, making work easier and less stressful, check out how you can successfully implement a healthcare solution to your organisation!

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Published by: Rithika S 2021072609:47:01

Exploring The Benefits of Online Appointment Systems

The need for healthcare services is growing with the increase in population and the number of patients who seek healthcare at hospitals, medical facilities, holistic groups, and physician practices has improved significantly.

These bring a new set of challenges for the staff of the facility and administrators. Online scheduling software, a recent technological advancement, has made the booking process in hospitals easier for both patients and administrative staff.

What are the advantages of an Online Scheduling System?

Online scheduling systems are also known by many names such as online booking applications, online schedulers, online scheduling software, and more. It is one of the most commonly used web-based applications and enables individuals to securely and conveniently book their reservations and requests online via a laptop, tablet, smartphone, computer, and other web-connected devices.

Anyone can access the online appointment management system via the URL provided by the healthcare or medical facility or through a “Book Now” button on the website. Once the time and date are selected, the system confirms the bookings automatically and also records them within the system instantly without any intervention from the staff.

The online appointment management system also comes with features like automated text and email message reminders, which are sent to the booked patients or individuals on the date booked before their scheduled time of booking. The flexibility of the online appointment management system in healthcare includes

Booking inoculations and vaccines in hospitals.
Scheduling a patient’s treatment, services, and appointments.

Time-Saving:

The staff spends less time on managing appointments, and phone booking, and can, therefore, use their free time for more urgent and vital tasks. The patients can also save time as there is no need to call the hospital and book an appointment in the middle of their busy schedule.

Example: Consider a large medical facility hospital that schedules 100 plus appointments daily. Every appointment call is handled by the support staff from the administration, and they spend approximately 3 to 4 minutes on a phone call.

In this case, if the healthcare facility switches to an online booking system it can save most of their time and also get more time to deal with other pressing tasks in the facility.

Monetary Savings:

The time savings made by the facility can translate automatically into monetary savings as a reduction in services and staff translates into a reduction in expenses. The appointment management system can reduce the need for extra human resources created by appointment scheduling.

24 hours convenience:

An individual is needed to schedule an appointment over the phone calls during office hours, and therefore people need to work round the clock on the phone booking. With an online appointment management system, the individual or the patient can book an appointment at any time. It is seen that after business hours, more than 55 percent of all appointments are booked through online scheduling appointment systems.

Online Payment:

Every service needs a secure payment system. As an online appointment management system is safe, and the data is kept secure, people find themselves comfortable with online payments. Offering a free consultation or discounts on consultation fees within the limited period after the initial consultation encourages individual patients to make use of the online appointment management system every time to book an appointment.

Healthcare providers are using the latest technology and keeping themselves updated to enhance quality. The online appointment scheduling system is considered to be a step forward in bringing a healthcare facility to the future.

Making the workflow perfect, enhancing data reporting and capturing, improving efficiency and time savings, and providing the patient with significant convenience and choice, thereby enhancing patient loyalty and trust are some important benefits of an online appointment management system.

Centralized Information System:

Online systems make patient management system easier and more efficient. Some online scheduling systems for appointments also have management of patient health records as part of the package. The organization can create a single point from which to save, update, manage, and analyze patient information.

Recording, reporting, and analyzing such information helps to efficiently manage the case file of a patient. All regularly recorded patient information, along with a history of check-ups and associated medical tests, can be used to make educated, carefully considered healthcare decisions. This can reduce the amount of documentation and the time it takes to access physical files.

It is also possible to avoid redundant data entries about the same patient. In addition, the ongoing records of the patient can be updated at each appointment, making patient information available for easy and fast access in one place. This is important when two different practitioners are consulted at the same facility by a patient.

Example: it may be more convenient for a patient consulting a dentist and an orthodontist at the same facility to have information stored at a single point, as the dentist would like to be informed about the ongoing orthodontic treatment of the patient to assess how best to handle the specific oral hygiene needs of the patient.

In the same facility under another doctor, a quick reference to the current orthodontic procedures that the patient undergoes is all it takes for the dentist to plan his procedure. It saves time and ensures complementary and coordinated overall services are provided. Such systems become a common interface to access information about a single patient by different medical staff. This can go a long way in strengthening the care process of a patient.

Benefits of an Online App...

Exploring The Benefits of Online Appointment SystemsThe need .....

Published by: Sanjana 2019052910:47:24

As new technologies and innovations arise, technological strides in the medical and healthcare industry increase in pace as well. The emergence of digital healthcare solutions has enabled hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare facilities to greatly enhance the delivery of medical services and products to their patients.

From aiding medical professionals in detecting serious diseases at its earliest stage to reducing medical errors to collaborating on a medical case, digital healthcare software solutions have allowed for these and more. Looking from a business perspective, digital healthcare systems help users improve their profitability exponentially, thus driving their business growth.

If those are not valid reasons for your company to go digital, then the following points will definitely convince you.

7 Reasons Your Company Should Use Digital Healthcare Solution

Centralize Information for Better Management, Storage, and Access
Create and Implement Personalized Journeys for Patients
Share Patient Information Easily across Multiple Platforms
Facilitate Continuity of Patient Care
Simplify and Increase Patient Bookings
Fuel Medical Research and Development
Empower Patients to Live a Healthier Lifestyle

1. Centralize Patient Information For Better Management, Storage, and Access

One of the most obvious benefits that stem from deploying a digital medical healthcare software is the centralization of patient information. Patient records, medical bulletins, patient medical histories, doctors’ instructions, progress reports - all the information contained in these documents are critical to the success of a patient’s medical treatment and outcome.

Manual entry of patient information takes time and can be prone to errors which some of the common small business problems. The storage of paper-based files requires resources and takes up physical space. Traditionally, accessing a patient’s files in the old days means browsing through file cabinets and checking each folder individually, which also takes time.

A digital healthcare solution streamlines the process of logging and categorizing of patient information while significantly reducing errors. It makes information access seamless and smooth. This is now an imperative as all medical professionals tasked to care for a patient requires immediate and reliable access to the patient’s data, be it doctors, nurses, therapists, dietitians.

Digital healthcare software ensures that they can access patient information in real-time using their desktop online or their mobile device. Access can be configured for added security, granting access to only those who are directly involved in patient care.

2. Create and Implement Personalized Journeys for Patients

As digital healthcare software solutions make it easy for medical professionals to centralize and access a patient’s data, the pains that often come with creating and executing personalized care plans are significantly reduced.

A study on the systematic delivery of healthcare services revealed that the utilization of standardized consultation templates is among the leading effective digital healthcare trends in creating personalized medical care plans for patients. Separate research on the full implementation of digital technology in healthcare cited numerous benefits, including the use of AI and robotics to support the patient in rehabilitation and recovery.

Access to prescriptions, allergies, medical history, and more are essential in helping medical professionals understand the needs of their patients and devise a personalized journey that guarantees the best experience possible and the desired results almost predictable.

3. Share Patient Information Easily Across Multiple Platforms

Digital healthcare software helps accelerate the sharing of patient information with other doctors and other healthcare professionals. This is crucial in a number of scenarios, such as handling critical cases that require insights and expert medical opinions from external parties or when an EMS or ambulance crew needs to provide ER teams with sufficient information prior to receiving the patient.

Sharing patient information no longer requires handling and receiving of actual patient files. A digital healthcare solution lets users share and receive files online via desktops, laptops, and mobile devices. Transmission of files is a breeze and can be done in a few clicks, saving users valuable time.

4. Facilitate Continuity of Patient Care

Electronic health records (EHR) play a crucial role in the continuity of patient care. Having all the patient’s information in a single, accessible page makes it easy for healthcare providers to keep themselves updated with the patient’s status.

Being able to retrieve and review files, scans, prescriptions, diet plans, and notes from other professionals allow users to make the necessary changes to the patient’s care plan if and when necessary. Direct coordination with laboratories, therapists, and other healthcare workers becomes more seamless and productive, resulting in the best medical journey possible for patients.

5. Simplify and Increase Patient Bookings

More patients mean more income coming into your hospital or clinic, which is crucial in a growing business. Doctors who run a private practice need patients to remain significant, competitive, and, most importantly, operational. Patients coming in for appointments represent a huge slice of your revenue pie.

With digital healthcare software, you can make the booking process convenient for your patients. Most healthcare systems come with customizable scheduling tools that help you create client-facing scheduling applications.

You can show your patients your work calendar with preferred time slots for the week or the month. The availability of your time slots is updated in real-time whenever someone has successfully booked an appointment. This ensures your patients pick a schedule that is both convenient for them and you. This feature prevents instances of double booking and decreases no shows.

6. Fuel Medical Research and Development

A patient's data, no matter how insignificant it may seem, can be instrumental in the future. The advances made in the medical field, some of them very recent, are fueled with data gathered from all over the world.

A study on linking healthcare and clinical research in 2018 enumerated several benefits of modern digital healthcare systems in terms of improving the research process and the output. The study, published by The International Journal of Medical Informatics, pointed out that medical data collected from healthcare solutions are better in terms of quality and accuracy. It also takes redundant data documentation out of the picture.

With digital healthcare systems, along with other technologies, patient information is now easily collected, collated, verified, and utilized for research and development of new drugs and treatments to further improve human health and well-being.

Hopefully, with all the patient information gathered from different sources, the medical world can discover effective medicine to combat and end serious illnesses that plague mankind. And ultimately, prevent large-scale epidemics like the Black Death and the Yemen Cholera Outbreak from happening ever again.

7. Empower Patients To Live A Healthier Lifestyle

For most patients, if not all, waiting for their diagnosis and test results can be a confusing aggravating, and frustrating experience. Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford highlighted in her speech in an AI technology festival that the deployment and utilization of digital technology, particularly AI, in the healthcare industry, can help provide better outcomes for patients by not only speeding up their diagnosis but also giving them more accurate results.

Digital healthcare software facilitates smooth and frictionless communication between healthcare professionals/providers and their patients. This feature enables doctors, therapists, and other healthcare workers to work closely with their patients and give them insights into their health on a very personal level. Being able to do so, you can empower your patients to make the right choices and plan for a long life that they can enjoy to the fullest.

The Future Of Healthcare Is Anchored On Digital Technology

According to a September 2018 report on digital systems in healthcare by the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS), hospitals, clinics, and other digital healthcare companies are continuously looking for ways to digitize their processes, and that absolute digitalization can be achieved by the majority of NHS organizations by 2023.

The deployment of digital technology in the medical and healthcare industry is not just limited to the United Kingdom. It is happening all over the world. Many hospitals, clinics, pharmaceuticals, and other healthcare establishments are making the transition to a totally digital model of operation and business.

It is no longer a question of “when” will the future arrive. The future is here already. And your company will be left in the dust of your competition if you’re not making the move to adapt to the changing times.

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