The hospital management system (HMS) is an integrated software which automates the routine management processes of a medical establishment. It ensures a smooth healthcare management performance along with robust administrative, medical, legal and financial control. Such a system has now become a cornerstone of operating any healthcare facility successfully.
Types of Hospital Management Systems
A good hospital management system ensures easy access to information about personnel, patients, suppliers, billing, and statistics. In addition, it can also have integrated telemedicine solutions.
Basically, with such a management system, a hospital’s employees have a multi-purpose digital tool that helps them to handle daily tasks with minimal effort.
A hospital or clinic management software varies in its complexity, scale, and functionality depending on a medical establishment’s requirements, size, and budget. Even though the functionality of hospital software can vary significantly from one establishment to another, the four basic types of clinic management systems can be defined as below:
- Operational and tactical systems for easy classification and management of information
- Patient administrative systems for managing interaction with patients on an administrative level
- Subject-based systems, such as Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) or Electronic Health Records (EHRs)
- Task-based systems, which are associated with certain tasks, such as admissions/discharge systems
- Billing systems for monitoring and managing finances
It is possible to combine different types of software or bits of functionality and the product can be customized for a medical facility to match their specific requirements and needs.
Features / Components of an HMS
Regardless of any hospital’s needs, requirements, and approach to work, there are some universal features which are a must have for any hospital management software. These are:
Patient Registration and EHR/EMRs (Electronic Health/Medical Records)
It is critical to be able to register patients into the hospital’s system and file in all relevant information which would be easily accessible. Establishing proper patient registration system software is the foundation upon which the rest of the patient-interaction system logic is built.
Appointment and Scheduling
Patients should be able to book a visit. Additionally, physicians and patients should have access to patients’ accounts in order to view and change appointment information if required and get a notification alert about approaching appointments with alerts, emails, or SMS.
Billing and Financial Management
Hospital management system should have hospital billing system that provides the possibility to manage and monitor finances and different financial operations including taxes, revenues, costs, and patient bills from one place.
Doctors Information
Ideally, medical software should have a section with information about physicians that provide their service at the establishment. The feature should contain a list of the available doctors and their schedules as well as the experience, achievements, and their area of expertise.
Inventory Management
In order to ensure that the supply of medical materials, medicines and equipment is steady and there are no sudden shortages, proper inventory management is required.
Laboratory Management
Laboratory management allows for the faster retrieval of the laboratory analysis and test results. Proper software can quickly notify physicians and patients about the results of the analysis as well as provide easy access to all the lab information in one place.
Statistics and Reports
Extensive statistics on finance, patients and doctors’ information can be sources of invaluable insights that help the medical establishment develop operational strategies.
Support
The support section of the healthcare management system should have all the tools necessary to help the support personnel handle different issues and requests from users as well as facilitate the proper functioning of the system and integrity of the data.
Telemedicine Solution
Telemedicine solution is a modern approach to healthcare that allows conducting virtual remote meetings with a physician via teleconferencing. It’s not suitable for all hospitals, but some of them, which do not necessarily require a face-to-face meeting, could benefit from this software.
Mobile App for Customers and Employees
A basic mobile app for hospital management could contain personal treatment calendars, schedules with dates available, information about doctors, ability to book appointments, and can be used by employees to for anywhere access.
Facility Management
The facility management module is responsible for tracking and maintaining the room availability, the occupancy status as well as various kinds of administrative documentation.
The Power of AI
This advanced feature uses machine learning techniques to predict patient flow and demand for hospitals and healthcare providers. Additionally, voice based assistants can record the patients data and generate a prescription based on it.
Benefits of having a Hospital Management System
Improved Processes
Automation is one of the main benefits as it helps to optimize the user experience. Medical specialists, patients, and hospital authorities can interact online, make the appointments and exchange information.
Digital Medical Records
The disease history, test results, prescribed treatment can be accessed by doctors digitally without much delay in order to make an accurate diagnosis and monitor the patient’s health. This also reduces the paperwork, its storage and management.
Staff Interaction
It is vital to engage all of your employees for improved coordination and teamwork and that too quickly.
Decreased Cost & Increased Savings
The financial awareness helps to analyse costs, avenues of savings and business prospects quite clearly and help the management to take the right decisions.
Faster Claims Processing
Integration with health insurance services improves the experience of the patients by enabling faster and easier claims processing, thereby saving time for the hospital as well.
Time Saving
As the services and interactions are automated and easy in all possible ways, all activities happen quickly with minimal chances of an error. It saves the time of all the parties concerned and also provides them with up-to-date information.
Patient Self-Service
Patients have their own system accounts where the list of various actions can be performed. They are able to make online requests or book appointments, receive the test results and many more.
Better Customer Experience
Since the hospital management system is patient-oriented, the treatment process can be less stressful. Doctors have more time for the examination and interaction with patients. In addition, all the requested information can be received online.
Developing a Hospital management system is a great way of boosting the medical facility’s productivity, decreasing workload and burn-out rates, streamlining workflow, and increasing customer satisfaction rates. We at AppleTech are capable of building a complete healthcare management system that will elevate your medical facility’s productiveness to the next level.
