Running a hospital or health clinic is no ordinary feat. Consider this: You are running a business where patients’ safety and satisfaction take precedence over your profitability. Every.Single.Time! Even if you see patients or their families behave irrationally, you’d still need to accommodate their needs on ‘humanitarian’ grounds.
Hospitals need to manage multiple processes (like patient registration, billing, scheduling, etc.), stay compliant with the latest healthcare regulations, and manage tons of reports dealing with patients’ confidential data. Moreover, if any of these critical processes are not managed well, your business suffers substantially. But how substantial is the damage? Let’s find out with the help of a few statistics:
- According to the latest reports, 86% of errors made in the healthcare industry are administrative in nature.
- For 30% of visits, patients’ charts cannot be found.
- Hospitals need to fill out 20,000 forms every year on average.
A growing number of hospitals and clinics today make use of software to manage several operations within their facilities and synchronize tasks of multiple departments. Though hospital management software (HMS) first came into existence to minimize errors and reduce paperwork, technological advancements have allowed them to take on multiple tasks like financial management, records management, scheduling, inventory management, and so on.
Hospital management systems provide a range of benefits to both hospitals and their patients. Scroll down to discover the benefits of using a hospital management solution.
Benefits of Hospital Management Software
Reduced Manual Errors:
The consequence of an error made in medical records, dosage, or medical care can be drastic for patients and could even cost them their lives. Every year, about 2,00,000 deaths are caused due to such errors. A hospital management solution brings down the number of errors to zero soon after its implementation and prevents errors due to bad handwriting, missing records, or duplication.
Better Data Access:
With the use of software, hospitals can store and unify all data related to patient’s health, medical background, test results, and billing securely within their systems. These records are easily accessible to medical professionals and help them make better decisions for patients.
Cost-effective:
Using a Best hospital management system not only helps reduce the workload of your staff, but they also come much cheaper than hiring staff for finance, HR, and appointment management.
Improved Patient Experience:
Another major plus of using HMS is the improved experience of patients. Not only do they have to deal with far fewer errors, but these systems also help establish a healthy and transparent relationship with patients. Most HMS are designed to be patient-oriented and help patients schedule appointments, view medical records, and get their queries resolved online.
Revenue Management:
Hospital management solutions provide a range of financial reports, insights, and forecasts that help improve profitability and reduce wastage. They let the management know of emerging trends and profitability of each service besides automating the billing process.
Better Staff Communication:
With a good hospital management software, you can easily improve collaboration and communication between staff. A centralized system allows staff to share updates and records instantly with each other, saving their time and improving efficiency.
Now that we know about the advantages of HMS let’s take a look at the key modules and features of such software.
Key Features/Modules of Hospital Management Software
Staff Management:
Hospitals have a variety of staff working in different positions. Hospital management systems help bring all of their records and schedules under a single interface and track their working hours. This also helps hospitals schedule appointments and make quick adjustments in appointments.
Patient Management:
This HMS module helps keep track of all patients’ records digitally and reduces the amount of paperwork needed. They help in the safe storage and easy retrieval of patient information, prescriptions, doctors’ notes, reminders, appointments, and diagnoses, much to the delight of patients and their loved ones.
Inventory Management:
Hospitals need to constantly be vigilant about the supply of medical materials and their current stock of medicines. HMS helps staff place orders for medical equipment and can also inform you about the expiry dates of medications.
Laboratory Management:
Hospital management software also helps manage labs and book slots and rooms for patients. Physicians are automatically notified when lab reports are ready and such records can be stored in the system as long as you want. Doctors can also communicate with laboratories through the HMS interface and provide them special notes.
Reports Management:
Hospitals primarily have to deal with two types of reports – medical and financial. With hospital management software, both these records can be unified for easier data management. Besides doctors and staff, patients and insurance companies too can access a few reports.
There are several other modules present in HMS solutions that help physicians, staff, and patients. Many of them are cloud-based solutions with integrated chatbots to assist customers’ queries on the go. With the right hospital management solution by your side, you can bid farewell to accounting, scheduling, and storage woes while getting better control, insight, and oversight over all of your key operations.
