Best Hospital Management Software

What is the Hospital Management System?

In the highly commercialized healthcare industry requirement of convergent management, the application is felt more urgently than before. The hospital management system software is a tailor-made application designed to cater to the complex business requirements of a hospital, nursing home, and healthcare institutions in keeping track of inpatient, outpatient, doctor availability, medical billing, etc. These are highly specialized software designed to take care of all aspects of a hospital operation.

Why a Hospital Needs Centralized Hospital Management Software?

Today healthcare is a rapidly growing industry which means it's experiencing a high growth rate in terms of service provided. A central management system works in tandem with the different platforms like sales, billing, accounting, customer care, etc. to create a convergent, integrated environment that produces results in real-time.

Why Comprehensive Hospital Management Software?

1. Hospital software is a central database that stores information related to inpatient, outpatient, doctors, etc.

2. Hospital management system offers records in real-time to check the availability of beds, inventory, doctor charges, scheduling of doctor appointment, and more

3. POS and billing application to ensure correct and efficient billing with no delay

4. Maintain proper medical and other records and thus, facilitates documentation

5. Helps hospitals in maintaining transparency at every level of operation

6. It offers a multi-user facility which ensures that multiple users can access the hospital billing software at the same time.

7. Offers efficient staff management and allocation of doctor and staff duty

Hospital management system software has become an essential tool for hospital management. Hospital information system allows healthcare institutions to manage their operation and serve patients better. Several of these hospital software work both as hosted applications and desktop applications. Some vendors also allow significant customization of the application suited to meet the intrinsic requirements of the client’s business. There are now several such hospital management applications are available in the market, like – PulsePlus. It is fully customizable, web-based Electronic Medical Record software (EMRS) designed for students.

Important Features to Look While Buying Hospital Management Software

Hospital management software solutions come with a host of features that can automate various tasks related to staff, patient, and accounts management, to create value for hospitals and patients. Let’s take a look at some of the typical features of the best hospital management software solutions:

1. Appointment Scheduling:

Patients can view the availability of doctors. They can schedule, reschedule, or even cancel appointments through self-service portals and mobile apps. A color-coded system shows the front office staff all the available slots so that they can take appointment requests over the phone accordingly. The system also sends patients reminders and confirmation requests for upcoming appointments.

2. Patient Record Management:

Hospital management software solutions can document and manage all patient information such as personal information, contact details, appointment history, medical reports, bills, prescriptions, insurance information, medical history, and so on. All this information is stored securely and can be retrieved by authorized users for easy reference.

3. Physician Management:

Manage the availability of the various doctors in the hospital and keep track of their in-times and out-times. Record all the information related to the experience, expertise, and achievements of all the doctors. Make it available to patients so that they have all the information they need to choose a doctor as per their requirements.

4. Claims Management:

Submit claims to insurance providers, track claim status in real-time, streamline your communication with insurance agencies to speed up the insurance payment lifecycle, and provide a superior patient experience.

5. Inventory Management:

This feature ensures a steady supply of medical materials and equipment in the hospital. It helps you keep track of stock levels and receive alerts to reorder stock before it runs out. Keep track of expiration dates. Place orders with suppliers and track the status of the shipments.

6. Laboratory Management:

Hospital management software solutions act as a repository for all laboratory results and documents. The software notifies patients as well as doctors when reports are ready. Hospital staff, patients, and doctors can retrieve lab results in just a few clicks. All such lab reports are stored securely and are accessible to authorized people only.

7. Billing/Accounts Management:

Hospital management solutions facilitate quick and error-free billing and invoicing. The software takes stock of various billables such as consultation fees, room rent, operation theatre charges, medicines, etc., and generates bills accordingly within minutes. It can share electronic copies of the invoice via emails and even send alerts to follow up on the payments. It can also share the bill directly with a patient’s insurance provider to speed up claim processing.

8. Reporting:

Generate various reports based on the financial, operational, and other data available in the hospital management system. Use these insightful reports for making managerial decisions or for audits and compliance-related matters.

Crucial Hospital Management Software Modules

Hospital management software is a set of services aimed at creating a unified work system of all medical departments. It should meet the requirements of the healthcare centers as a whole and integrate the work of all medical arena.

A powerful healthcare software can organize the whole major functional area of a multi-specialty hospital with its several modules. Some of the crucial modules include:

1. In- and Out-Patient Management

Hospitals are the most complex healthcare units with different and huge departments to look after the patients. Keeping track of both in- and out-patient — records of admission, rooms, consultants, surgeons, billing, and more needs co-ordination among both medical and non-medical departments. This module eases out the whole process by efficiently managing and combining all departments needs together.

• Provides instant access when it comes to admission of patients and availability of beds

• Enables doctors to take better care of their patients by having fast access to patient’s information. It allows them to make timely diagnosis and treatment decisions

• Patient visits can be easily categorized into new and revisit

• Manages new requests and results of laboratory tests and other examinations

• Automates day-to-day administrative activities such as generating unique admission number for each patient

• Easily manage discharges and transfers as well

• Creates and manages invoice, payment due, and advance payment

• Generates reports daily, monthly, yearly, or by date with ease

2. Doctor Management

The doctor module is another important module of hospital management software that helps gather full information about the services of doctors. It allows the doctor to diagnose patients, assign treatment procedures and test, and generate a prescription for the same.

• Enables doctors to record patient symptoms, allergies, and give treatment details

• Allows them to keep track of their appointments schedule

• Keep records of inpatients and outpatients under their care

• Access to drug database to write a prescription

3. Pharmacy Management

Using healthcare software, hospitals can build up a database of drug care history. The pharmacy module automates the general workflow, thus improving the accuracy, safety, and performance of the pharmacy.

• Takes care of drug distribution and management of inventory — reorder, refill, and hold capabilities

• Easily retrieve, review, revise, and print patient profile and prescription history

• Conducts the distribution of medicines to the patient more effectively

• Makes the whole process of issuance of medicines fast and reliable

• Reduces workload by linking patient’s pharmacy billing to the main billing and automatically transferring the amount

4. Laboratory Management

Laboratory module of hospital management software seamlessly streamlines the workflow of diagnostic centers/pathology laboratories — right from raising a test request to reporting the results to the concerned doctor or department of the hospital.

• Effectively performs lab tasks — specimen sample collection, requisite test and results entry

• Easily track the status of the test and update about the same

• Sends out system alerts in case the doctor requires an urgent lab test result

• Generates billing for both inpatients and outpatients

• Sends out SMS/email to patients when results are available

• Maintain external laboratories list and also offer a detailed view of all the samples sent out to other laboratories

5. Staff, HR & Payroll Management

Allows registering of each and every staff member of the hospital. A complete payout structure can be determined and processed using hospital management software. Moreover, the consultant doctors can be cataloged with a separate block of consultants making it easy to access the database.

6. Reception Management

Reception module as a service unit of hospital management software automates the daily activities of the front office of the center. It assists in carrying out the day-to-day operation in an effective manner by handling patients/doctors related queries, the timing of the consultant, patient room search, etc. It improves the quality of services provided to the users.

7. Operation Theatre Management

Hospital management software should be able to keep track of all types of surgeries or operations that take place in the hospital. Operation theatre module allows for scheduling theatres, recording the operation details, maintaining equipment details, and other related services. Furthermore, one can easily search through a patient’s details who has gone through an operation before. It includes their operation type, room number, and date of the surgery.

8. Electronic Medical Record (EMR)

EMR module is designed to eliminate paperwork from the hospital and improve clinical productivity. It provides access to relevant information about patients and removes any loops in communication by integrating the entire system. Thus, hospital management software can provide high-quality, cost-effective, and efficient patient care.

9. MIS Reports

Management information system report is one of the most important modules of hospital management software. It allows for analyzing and monitoring of each department by the top management of the hospital.

Benefits of Hospital Management Software

The various features of hospital management software solutions can help hospitals achieve unprecedented efficiency. Let’s discuss some of its benefits:

1. Easy Data Management and Access:

Hospital management systems serve as a centralized database and act as a single source of truth for all information related to the hospital and its patients.

2. Enhanced Cost-efficiency:

Hospital management solutions automate manual, labor-intensive tasks and allow you to work with a smaller administrative team. They also make various processes completely paperless.

3.Reduced Errors:

Automated systems limit manual intervention in many tasks and activities, which reduces the scope of errors.

4. Better Patient Experience:

The features of hospital management solutions allow hospitals to adopt a more patient-oriented approach and deliver a quality patient experience.

5. Increased Staff Collaboration:

Hospital management software solutions facilitate the quick and secure exchange of information across the various departments of a hospital and fuel staff collaboration.

6. Improved Revenue Management:

With features such as billing and invoicing, accounts management, and financial reporting, hospitals can monitor, control, and track payments, expenses, and budgets for better revenue management.

Latest Technology Trends in Hospital Industry

The Healthcare industry is taking a leap towards a digitalized world. Technological trends in healthcare are focused on bringing real-time results. Today, medical institutions rely on big data and analytics to treat a health problem with more responsibility and take better care of their patients. Some of the technological trends in healthcare that is going to be dominant in 2020 are:

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI):

AI is transforming the healthcare industry. It has several implications for various fields of the healthcare industry such as clinical trials, wellness management, disease management, diagnosis and treatment, patient engagement, and monitoring of the patient.

In hospitals, AI helps to make an accurate diagnosis based on a patient’s EHR information. AI analyzes all information, symptoms, and past treatments to envision the health problem of the patient and solve it. For these reasons, it is essential to integrate AI technology into the hospital management software or the healthcare app today to stay relevant in the future.

2. Internet of Medical Things (IoMT):

The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) means various devices are connected to each other through the internet. It is used for remote monitoring of patients’ well-being through the means of wearables, thereby reducing the costs of healthcare solutions. IoMT is contributing sensors and systems to capture data and deliver it accurately. It allows doctors to analyze and predict health trends.

3. Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality (AR/VR):

AR and VR offer feasible solutions to many challenges of the health care system. These technologies are revolutionizing the healthcare industry. It can be easily implemented in various areas such as medical training and general diagnostics. They improve the overall patient experience and make it less problematic by adding navigating features among other things. For instance, AR can help the patient to keep track of their vital stats and stay tuned with their therapy progress in a more engaging manner. It is also used by my specialist in mental health to treat patients who can’t come to the medical center for the usual treatment.

4. Telehealth:

Telehealth is the use of digital information and communication technologies, such as computers and mobile devices, to remotely monitor patients’ health. Thus, it helps improve health care access and outcomes, especially for chronic disease treatment. It reduces the demands on crowded facilities and makes the health sector more resilient.

Telehealth technology trends will help patients become more engaged with routine checkups and will form a stronger relationship with their doctors.

5. Blockchain:

One of the biggest challenges of healthcare software IT is to create highly valuable virtual records of patients and transparency between drug manufacturers and customers.

The blockchain technology advantage is that it enhances security, interoperability, and protects privacy breaches. In short, it places the patient at the core of the healthcare ecosystem. It helps manage endless data including insurance claims, patient health information, and electronic health records and keeps them safe and secured.

Overall, these cutting-edge technologies embedded in healthcare software are heading towards enhances patient care, preventive care, cost-effectiveness, and big data processing.

Potential Issues with Hospital Management System

Health care is a crucial service that needs dealing with heaps of documents, papers, forms, etc. As healthcare as an industry is rapidly growing, the volume and cost of document management are steadily increasing too. Not only it requires an efficient hospital information system but is also crucial for streamlining the daily operation of the institution.

In most parts of the world hospital, nursing homes, and healthcare institutions are highly regulated regarding documentation and management. Hospital management software is a complete tool that manages all aspects of administration, management as well as the marketing of a hospital to allow them and doctors to serve better. Following are the major advantages of virtual hospital software in today’s evolving healthcare industry.

1. Marketing and Sales:

A hospital needs an efficient hospital management system that will track its marketing and sales performance. It is designed as a comprehensive system to track all leads generated from all sources and deliver them on a consolidated platform. Similarly, the software doubles as a point of sales software that records patient’s details and transaction histories for future references and in turn plays an important role in determining increasing sales volume. An efficient inquiry system will save precious time and effort by offering consolidated information.

2. Accounting and Administrative:

The second most important purpose that hospital software satisfies is the tracking of accounting and financial transactions. It helps hospitals maintaining transparency and therefore facilitates auditing. It functions as a central repository of patient records offering real-time data on a convergent platform and thus helping hospitals in abiding by data security and confidentiality rules set by authorities.

Currently, there is a great deluge of hospital management software and similar tools. And hence, it is important to select the software application appropriate for your complex business requirements. If we are to made a few suggestions those will be Visual Hospital Management, Medismart, Elixir, etc.

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