What is the Hospital Management System?
In the fast-paced world of healthcare, managing multi-speciality functions can be a daunting task. However, with a robust computer or web-based hospital management system software, different functions can be automated. It integrates all important processes related to patients, administrative staff and medical professionals to ensures timely patient care and quick diagnosis.
Hospital management software helps in managing all-important operations of a healthcare unit, ranging from appointment booking to inventory management, billing and generating electronic medical record (EMR).
What are the Modules in Hospital Management System?
Hospital administrators and the management team have to take smart steps to manage hospital operations in the most efficient and quick way. And, technologies like hospital management system can play an important role here. Let’s explore useful modules of hospital management software that will help in making your organization patient-centric.
- Patient Management System
A hospital management system helps make the patient management process hassle-free. Patients can book data online, staff can register their details and doctors can view their reports with a single hospital management system.
- Online Appointment Management System
With online appointment management system, patients can book an appointment online and your staff don’t have to waste time in maintaining physical registers. Also, doctors and staff can check the appointment status and plan their schedule accordingly.
- Doctor Consultation
With the use of a hospital management system, you can track a patient’s visit and define consultation charges for them as per the service offered. Also, it helps classify patients as new or existing and maintain their details accordingly for easy diagnosis.
- In-Patient Management
The in-patient management feature of hospital management software helps manage requirements related to the surgeon, bed availability, consultant and prescription. Also, you can manage patient details related to their medical information, lab reports, radiology and patient assessment.
- Out-Patient Management
Outpatient management module of hospital management software helps in reducing patient wait time and makes the billing process hassle-free. Also, pharmacy prescriptions can be created for out-patients easily to ensure timely medical support. All patient-related details can be entered into the system to maintain a paperless procedure.
- Billing & Discharge Summary
Owing to the high patient footfall, the admin staff often ends up making billing errors. Such billing errors prove costly for hospitals, as they lose a significant part of their revenue. For avoiding manual errors, the hospital management software ensures automated billing with patient details extracted from their discharge summary.
- Laboratory Management
The hospital management system software also assists in managing different aspects of lab operations. It helps with investigation history tracking, reporting, sample management, billing, and more. Also, patients can access reports directly online.
Why a Hospital Management System is Required?
With the best hospital management system, the admin staff and doctors can access patient data online to provide a quick diagnosis. Doctors can check treatment history and test reports of patients to make timely treatment decisions.
At the same time, administrative professionals can update patient details online for future reference and fasten the billing process. With the automation of healthcare processes, different departments can work in an inter-connected manner towards providing optimum patient care and improving the turnover.
Must-Have Features in your Hospital Management System
A hospital management system software is designed for healthcare setups to manage all their operations. From administrative to financial and medical, every aspect can be managed with hospital management software. Let’s find out the most useful features of HMS software:
- Patient Management: From scheduling patient appointment to booking their registration, the hospital management system software helps with complete and long-term patient care. It also helps in maintaining patient records with respect to radiology, pharmacy and pathology lab results. Not to forget the consultation and diagnosis records of patients, which are all maintained electronically.
- Electronic Medical Records: Online hospital information system is useful for doctors, as it helps them check about patient appointments easily. Furthermore, doctors can analyse a patient’s medical case by accessing their medical history online. Also, lab reports and tests can be accessed electronically. If different doctors are working on a single case, they can collaborate and share insights through hospital management software.
- Medical Facilities Management: Hospital management system helps the administrative team of any healthcare set up to ensure a regular supply of medical equipment and facilities. It assists with the management of medical supplies along with blood bank inventory. And, all this can be done with minimal chances of human error.
- MIS Reports: Healthcare professionals use MIS reports for accessing in-depth insights regarding billing, revenue, medical services, and discharge summaries. These reports are also analyzed for monitoring performance of different departments.
- Payroll & Accounting: With the help of hospital management software, you can keep track of purchases, payments and expenses for your healthcare setup. Expenses and payments can be managed and controlled across both, in-patient and out-patient departments to give a holistic picture. At the same time, it makes it easier to compute staff salary based on their leave and attendance data.
Benefits of Hospital Management System
An online hospital management system provides a broader picture of hospital operations. And helps take steps to increase their effectiveness. The software has many benefits, which can be potentially categorised into broader categories as:
- Improved Clinical Decision-Making: The best hospital management system makes the process of clinical decision-making fast and data driven. Every data is easily accessible to doctors and medical support staff to take the necessary steps and improve clinical processes.
- Tech-Enabled Processes: Tech-enabled processes result in higher efficiency and less errors. Your hospital staff can handle multiple types of user requests with a single system. This eventually leads to higher brand reputation and more revenue.
- Improved Data Security: Hospital management system provides access-based approach to the data. Your staff can access the data based on their user rights, and there is no chance of a breach.
- Revenue management: Hospital management systems provide regular transactional reports for efficient revenue management.
- Better efficiency of hospital operations: Hospital management information systems support tracking options for checking room occupancy, operational details and staff availability for eliminating compliance issues.
- Secure access to patient data: With a hospital management system, it is easy to access patient history and real-time reports for fast processing of patient details. This also reduces staff’s administrative burden.
- Faster support for patients: As a result of faster processes, integrations and interconnectedness, patient’s get treatments faster and with ease.
- Reduced errors: Hospital management software reduces clinical errors, cost leakages, errors in appointment, billing and other types of operational mistakes.
- Improved patient care: Quick access to patient data and electronic health records ensures faster and accurate diagnosis.