When searching for software, almost everyone looks for free ones. If you simply type in the name of any random software, you’ll probably see a google autocomplete suggestion “free download”. In some cases, it does make a lot of sense in using free software. Why pay for something when you can get it for free? 

Searches for downloading free EMR software have increased with government legislation mandating their use in hospitals. Let us look into why this is a bad idea.

If you’re not paying for it, you’re the product

As a general rule, nobody ever gives you something for free. As economists would say, “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product”. In the case of most free software, this is the case. Recently it was found that most of the free antivirus apps in the Google Play store actually did nothing. Their purpose? Probably to collect data from your device. This may not affect an average person very much, but if you’re concerned about privacy, you should probably stay away from these software. And when you’re dealing with a hospital management software, this is a key aspect. Data security is a very important aspect especially when you handle patient data. A data leak, however small has the potential to damage the reputation of your hospital. 

Lack of accountability

A hospital management system has to have certain qualifications that assure you that a particular software can fit your needs. When you purchase a software, it is possible for you to verify if these software fit the criteria. But when you download a software for free, there is no way for you to be sure if these software fit the criteria. And since there is no monetary transaction between you and the software provider, it will be difficult to hold them accountable. 

The lack of accountability will be an issue if the software faces any glitches. If the software crashes, customer support is not provided for the system, and you will be on your own. A software glitch in a free android app may be annoying, and will not cause any huge problems even if is not resolved. In case of a hospital, the software handles sensitive patient information and a software glitch can compromise this data, and with no tech support from the providers, it can cause a lot of problems. 

Upgrades? Nope

As government regulations change, and as the technology improves, you may face the need for a better software. If you’re relying on a free software for very important tasks, such as managing your hospital, you may find yourself stuck with an old software. Free software rarely provide any upgrades for long durations. And when you want an upgrade, you may find yourself searching for a new software, and you’ll have to import the existing data into the new software which will require additional resources. 

The story of the open source software

A commonly trusted free software are the open source software. Ubuntu is an example of an open source software. They are usually made by developers across the world, and their source code is available for free, and you’re free to change or modify the code as you wish. Since the source code is available for everyone, it is unlikely that the software can have malicious intents. And as long as the developers continue to improve the software, it will remain up to date with the required features. Open source software appears to offer a very good deal, and they do, in the case of most of the software. But in the case of a hospital management system, it is never a good idea to use an open source software. This is because of a combination of reasons discussed above. First of all, there are no hospital management software with the kind of community that a software like Ubuntu has. If you face any issues, you’re on your own. In the case of popular softwares, there may be forums in which users can discuss issues, and they may get resolved. But for a hospital management software, there are no such forums, and when you’re managing a hospital, you cannot afford to wait for a solution that may never come. And as we discussed, updates will be available for open source software only as long as the developers are working on the project.

What about the free trials?

If you have been looking for free HMS downloads, you may have come across many SaaS healthcare software companies offering lite or trial versions of their software for free, or maybe the complete version of their software, but for a limited time period. These software are generally secure and will be much more robust than software from other software providers. They may even offer regular updates. But remember that these trial versions are just for that. They will be severely limited in their capabilities, and you will definitely have to upgrade at some point. And the providers may not provide tech support if you’re using the free version. But they do provide an easy way to evaluate a software and if available, they serve as a demo for the complete version. 

Lack of customization

Generally across hospitals, or even across departments, there is no uniform workflow. Each department head has their own workflows, and this is the reason why hospital management systems are highly customized. However such customization is not at all possible in a hospital management system, and if implemented, could affect the functioning of the hospital and may prove to be counterproductive. 

To know more about hospital management software, visit MocDoc Hospital Information System.

HMS covers three aspects of managing the hospital; they are Operational, Financial, and Clinical Aspects. If you look at the Doctor Management System, most of the software covers only operational and financial aspects like billing, inventory management, patient registration, scheduling, and workflow management. When evaluating HMS software, hospitals give much importance to operational and financial aspects and less importance to clinical records.

This blog discusses the importance of focusing on clinical records, otherwise known as Electronic Medical Records (EMR) in HMS.

What is EMR?

EMR is called Electronic Medical Records (EMR), which include information regarding the patient's medical history and treatment as discrete medical practices possess them.

When considering individual patients, the EMR will include information like patient contact information (emergency contact), physician orders, allergies, insurance, and other billing information, surgical notes on various medical progress, prescriptions, vitals like weight, height, body temperature, BMI (Body Mass Index), etc., release information forms, medical facility appointments on past and future, treatment plans and Discharge summaries, etc. 

EMR constitutes different characteristics considering the medical practices, which include their functioning system to all other medical care procedures.

Apart from the benefits of the software platform, the Electronic Medical Record Systems also provides much other prominent information for care.

Coordination procedures connecting reception information and transfer departments, the software, personal use rules of the organizations, training, and education established plans are some of the well-established components of the Electronic Medical Record System.  

Benefits of EMR for the Medical Practice

Below are some of the advantages of Electronic Medical Records to Medical Practices.

• Capable of quickly transferring patient information from one department to the other.
• The digital record environment helps to save much space.
• Through EMR, you can quickly enhance the number of patients for improved productivity and workflow of the patients daily.
• Medical practice with reduced errors leads to a vast improvement in patient care and result management.
• The operational cost is much reduced with EMR, especially for expenses made for overtime labor and transcription services.
• With EMR, electronic medical records can be customized and are scalable.
• The capability of providing advanced clinical documentation and e-prescribing. 
• The efficient and accurate process of billing with their advanced healthcare practices.

What Benefits does EMR provide for the Patients?

• Improvement in Patient Treatment and other Diagnoses of diseases.
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• Rapid decision-making responses and patient care from different medical professionals assigned to individual patients. No chances for significant errors in a patient health record.

What are the Essential Core Capabilities of the EHR?

The Electronic Medical System indulges seven different core capabilities, namely.

Health Information and Data:

With EHR, you can quickly access essential information about the patients, their allergies, diagnosis of their diseases, medications, lab test results, etc., which provides a clear idea for the custodian or minder to decide on the treatments promptly.

Result Management:

People who take care of the patients are provided with multiple settings regarding patient care. This will undoubtedly improve the effectiveness of the care and safety of the patients reliably through quick access to past and new test results.

Decision Support:

The computerized EMR system makes use of Prompts, reminders, and alerts for various benefits like providing complementary clinical practices with improved compliances, possibilities of regular screenings, and capability of taking other vital methods, natural treatment, and diagnosis and also helps to identify the possible interaction of the drugs, etc. precisely.

Electronic Connectivity and Communication:

Improved care continuity, enhanced timeliness of the treatment and diagnosis of diseases, reduced events frequency, etc., are some of the critical benefits of the Electronic Medical System for secure, efficient, and accessible communication between patients and providers.

Patient Support:

The various tools provided for the patients, like easy access to their health records anytime, interactive health table and patient education, self-testing and home monitor methods, etc., help to keep their diabetes and other chronic diseases under control.

Reporting:

Electronic Medical System has plenty of advantages indulged in the HMS. One of the critical reasons 90% of clinicians choose EHR is their reduced human errors.

As a whole, EHR security needs a fine tune in case of the substance abuse records and terms of the behavioral actions. By doing so, they can calculate the patient's body conditions efficiently. E.g., if nurses and physicians have every minute detail regarding their patient's history at their fingertips, there might be no massive chances for critical care and emergency treatment.

The detailed history of the patients will help in finding a new healthcare provider through the patient's current health state and the medical record. They also support exchanging patient information with healthcare facilities if the patients have not requested them.

Integration

Electronic medical record (EMR) is not a standalone system. Instead, it is a complete ecosystem with several integrations, making it a holistic solution for the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, care, and management of medical conditions.

To learn more about the MocDoc Healthcare System.

Inspiring patients to reach your hospital is not easy. It is significant to raise your patient base if you think you have to bring justice to all the pennies you have invested in your hospital. Effectively marketing your hospital can help you to bring much profit. You need to make sure that the marketing you do for your hospital should not be controlled by sales support or brand building. The important thing is that you need to make a positive connection with the terms of your patients.

Hospital Marketing has seen a tremendous change over the past few years, and some medical facilities are making use of hotel-like comforts to pamper and attract potential patients. In this blog, we will deal with the useful tips you can follow for marketing your hospital. 

Create a responsive website: 

The most important thing every patient does while choosing a hospital is that they go entirely through the website unless and until your hospital is located nearby to their location. Significantly, you make a responsive website with useful health information rather than build a website that displays information about your team or hospital. It would be good if you listed healthcare information so that patients themselves can take care of their families and themselves during an urgency. 

Make use of SEO: 

9 out of 10 people look for affordable or best hospitals online and know about the hospital, the doctor's availability, and other related information before merely visiting it. If you need to get listed while you search for the best healthcare clinic or practices, you need to make sure to use the power of SEO. The content editor and web developer focus on the effective keywords for your hospital to be listed at the top of the search engine results. You can hire an experienced SEO consultant and make the process more productive, more comfortable, and affordable. 

Ensure your patients say Wow on your healthcare:

Branding is not just what you say about yourself to your customers. It's something that the patient or people say about you and your healthcare. Improve patient care, and make sure they keep your healthcare and treatment in mind for a long time. Ensure to provide them with attention and care so that they will speak for you and recommend you to their friends and family members too. Word of Mouth is the crucial thing you need to focus on. 

Showcase your positives:

Show up your excellent work through videos, patient stories, testimonials, etc. on LCDs in your hospital waiting for areas so that people and patients visiting your website or hospital will come to know about you. Also, don't forget to post on social media, and talk about breakthrough treatments in conferences, public forums, and interviews. 

Use Social Media effectively:

Social Media is one of the essential ways through which you can make everything possible. Social media websites like Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, Linkedin, and Pinterest, can effectively improve the number of patients visiting your hospital as well as those is the best place where you can create brand awareness by choosing the targeted audiences and attracting them to visit your clinic. 

Utilize Internal Marketing too:

Every employee in your hospital is the spokesperson. Grab your HR head to make use of it, create the experience of the employees at your clinics, and make them say positive things about the hospital. 

Shoot Emails:

Emails are an efficient and powerful thing when it comes to marketing. Make sure your company's IT team maintains the email list of subscribers and shares relevant and positive information emails regarding the illness of the patient. It indicates that you have proper care for your patients even after they leave your hospital. Maintaining a good and effective relationship and communication with high-value, helpful, and useful information is key to developing a powerful hospital brand. 

Bottom Line: 

Show your society and patients in general that you have excellent care about their well-being and health. Also, show them you do not need them to go to a stage where they don't want to go to the hospital next time.

For More details Visit MocDoc Hospital Information System.

When you decide to implement a hospital management system in your hospital, the next step is to decide which system you want to use. Even though researching on the internet and going through the product catalogs of many software providers may tell you what to look for and what features are offered by different companies, it may not give you a complete picture. This is where an HMS product demonstration will be useful. Most companies provide free hospital management systems demos to prospective clients. A free demonstration of the software is an excellent way of knowing what exactly you will be getting when you finally purchase the software. It is like taking a test drive before you buy a car, and like a test drive, you need to know how to best know the software during the demo.

Understand your hospital

For getting a good hospital management software demo, the first step is to get a complete understanding of your hospital. Since you have already decided to get an HMS, you must have done most of your homework. But you need to know what features you will need when you implement the HMS. For HMS to achieve its full potential, the system should meet the requirements of all the users from the hospital administrator, to the lab technicians. To ensure this, discussions will have to be held with the users to get their input. The benefits of these discussions are two-fold. The requirements of different departments will be different and you will be able to know what everyone wants. The other benefit is that the employees of the hospital may have previous experience in using different kinds of HMS, and you will get a lot of insights into the advantages and drawbacks of different systems. And this information will come in handy while getting the demonstration.

Having a thorough understanding of the workflow is also very important. Usually, different department heads will have their ways of managing their departments. This is important both while getting a hospital software demo, as well as when you are implementing the system. Most HMS systems are customized around the workflow in a hospital, and company representatives will need to get a fair idea to provide you with a good solution. So it’s better to have all the answers ready when you’re getting the HMS demo. This will also help you when you implement an HMS system in your hospital

Online demo

Software providers sometimes provide demos on their websites, and this is a way for you to know the software before a face-to-face demo. You can use these online demos to learn the general features of the HMS system. Once you have gone through this demo, you will know what questions you have to ask the company representative. Online demos are free and the least time-consuming way to evaluate software, even though they may not be complete.

Questions you should ask

Once you have talked to other hospitals that have implemented  HMS or if you’re already using an HMS, you are probably aware of the general features all the HMS systems have. So before the demo, you need to keep in mind the problems at your hospital you’re trying to solve, and the features you’ll need to use this. The problems could be the ones faced by doctors or patients, such as difficulty in scheduling appointments, or they could be business problems, such as low returns or pilferage from the pharmacy.

A hospital management system demo usually takes around 45 minutes and starts with an introduction to the software company. After this, the company representative may ask you about the problems you are facing. Most companies are willing to customize their software for your needs, and you have to make the best use of this. Once you have explained the difficulties your hospital is facing, the representatives will probably explain some of the features they have that can solve these issues. During the demo, if you’re already aware of the general features, it is better to focus on these key features to make a good decision.  

There are no set rules on how a demo is conducted, so ask all the questions you have regarding the software. The point of getting a demo is not to make a decision then and there, but to understand all the features of the software. It’s also vital that all the stakeholders understand the software before making a decision, so have representatives from all the departments for the demo. Before deciding on a system, get demos from multiple companies, compare the software, and then decide. 

To learn more about HMS systems and get a demo, visit Mocdoc Hospital Information Management System