MocDoc's Offerings
Lab Management System
Hopsital Management System

Why your HMS should include Electronic Medical Records (EMR) 

Published By Sanjana
 2018111510:26:42
Category HMS


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.

  • 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.







Request for HMS/LIMS free demo

Related Articles


What is an integrated hospital management system? How could it help the hospitals? 





There are multiple departments in hospitals that carry out numerous activities daily. There is a lot of communication that takes place and information to share between departments which are crucial and need to be stored in a system with a good user interface. Hospitals use heterogeneous management systems like appointment scheduling software, telemedicine software, diagnostic software, EHR software, billing software, and more. It's a tedious task to maintain all this software and make a single report from various collections. Now, this requires a huge team! But what if a single management system could replace these heterogeneous systems efficiently?

An integrated hospital management system is one such system. Like any other hospital management system, it does not just store information but also connects all the departments under a single interface. It supports the various departments of a hospital such as a laboratory, clinic, and pharmacy in a single interface, making it easy for the departments to interact and share patient information. 

Interoperability is the constant chain in any hospital as on average, a patient visiting a hospital engages at least with two departments. Well, taking the chain of interoperability digital with an integrated hospital management system will help the hospital attain efficiency in its core aspects. Here are a few points on how this helps the patients and the hospital.

  • Patients part:

    1. Appointment: Make appointment booking hassle-free by letting your patients book appointments online via the website/mobile app.
    2. On the dot: Share electronic patient records with departments or patients themselves in no time.
    3. Reduce no-shows: Send SMS or email reminders to your patients, reminding them of their upcoming appointments.
    4. Personalized: Send health tips or diet plans to your patients based on their health conditions.


    Hospitals part:

    1.  One for all: An integrated hospital management system will eradicate the need for different systems as it combines all the department modules.
    2.  Performance Report: Generate weekly, monthly, or yearly performance reports of the hospital in a snap of fingers (No! You don't need a team to do this.)
    3.  Reference: Makes it easy to manage and estimate referral payments to clinics and outsourced laboratory tests.
    4. Marketing: Conduct medical camps remotely with the help of offline camp management modules and let your patients know through email.

      Thus, integration is crucial between all the departments of the hospital owing to interoperability. Integration between the departments will take their communication on a digital pathway, making the hospital's workflow seamless and easy. Here are the various areas of integration regarding a hospital.

      Hospital-Laboratory: Have you ever had a phase where the laboratory used different software from that of the hospital? If yes, then you must know how time-consuming each process with the laboratory could get. However, an integrated hospital management system will allow you to share patient health records and required tests with the laboratory. Likewise, the laboratory can send you the patient's electronic test results in no time. This eliminates paperwork and other possible manual work.

      Hospital-Pharmacy: How different is a hospital’s pharmacy from a standalone pharmacy? A pharmacy integrated with a hospital can get patients' e-prescriptions from doctors and provide timely medications to the in-patients. Further, the pharmacy can even take care of the supplements that are to be provided to the OT department. This integration allows the doctor to know about the availability of medicine in the pharmacy or its alternative before prescribing it to the patients.

      Hospital-Clinic: Well, parent hospitals do have multi-location clinics, and these clinics can be integrated with the hospital in a single interface, cases that need prior attention are often shifted to the hospital and this lets the hospital learn about the patient's history quickly through the health records. An integrated hospital management system allows the hospital to overlook the functioning of its multi-location clinics by just switching between the identities of the organization.

      Centralized Data vs Distributed Data: (Point of discussion)
      Centralized Data or Distributed Data, you have got data to handle. Data needs to be taken care of efficiently for the smooth everyday functioning of the hospital. But which is the better way to do so? 

      When every department is integrated into a single software, the data is centralized. Thus a patient ID once created is just carried forward by every department, whereas in the dominance of heterogeneous software, a patient has to get themselves registered, with every department attended.

      Organizing data and generating revenue or performance reports is very easy when the data is centralized. Most of the integrated patient management systems have the feature of an analytic dashboard which lets the management create weekly, monthly, or yearly performance reports of the hospital. When the data is distributed, it takes a lot of time to collect and organize them. This process is quite a lengthy one and requires a huge team at work.

      Cost-wise advantage: Software has different types of pricing patterns, which may be budget-friendly or not. Like subscription-based, a percent of your revenue is based on the number of patients visiting. Having different software is going to charge you in different ways and might end up very expensive too. On the other side, when just a single piece of software is in use by all the departments, you are charged by a standard pattern. This gives you the advantage of forecasting the cost you might have to endure and if it's budget-friendly

      Patient Experience: Patient satisfaction is a goal that any hospital wishes to achieve. It is the key to the productivity of the hospital. Perhaps, it creates the goodwill of the hospital. But how can software keep you far from achieving this?

      Turnaround time: No hospital wishes to increase a patient's turnaround time, Neither do you. But this might be happening unintentionally by the use of different software by departments. For instance, A patient has to manually take all the health records to the laboratory and get themselves registered for a test. On receiving the test results, the patient will again have to take the results to the doctor, themself. This whole process is time-consuming for the patients, and such issues can be solved by using a single software.

      Technical Issues: Diving into a scenario where a hospital maintains a separate billing software. Owing to a few technical issues the software turned faulty, which caused chaos at the reception. Problems like these are Stressful for the patients and are more likely to affect the reputation of the hospital. Such scenarios could be avoided with a cloud-based Hospital Management System where the cloud has a backup cloud to ensure such nightmares don't come true.

      Flexible Meeting: With all the changes the recent time has brought, Telemedicine has become a need. Patients now prefer the telemedicine facility for smaller health issues so that long and discomfort travels can be avoided. Hospitals should adapt themselves to this method of patient appointment and make sure that their software supports telemedicine. This makes things easy for patients who are old or who reside far from the hospital. And also helps the hospital in obtaining patient satisfaction.

      Ease for doctors and workers inside the hospital:
      Integrating every department of the hospital will ease down a lot of work for the doctors and other workers of the hospital. 

      1. Generating analytical reports with the help of a dashboard.
      2. Reduce manual paperwork by sharing electronic health records.
      3. Effective marketing Via email and SMS.

        The right software will increase the efficiency and productivity of the hospital. Hope you found this blog on the Integrated Hospital management system insightful. 



        Why use an integrated hospital...

        What is an integrated hospital management syste.....  Read more

         

        Hospital Management System has been used for decades. Most of the hospitals in India use HMS, but they face particular challenges in implementing it. Among them, technical and human challenges are the complicated factors while implementing HMS.

        How can you face the challenges while implementing HMS?

        The HMS system helps to manage every piece of information about the patients, like their personal data, comprehensive medical data, and previous medical histories, along with their diagnoses, treatments, investigations, and other medical decisions. Apart from that, HMS helps improve safety and quality and is one of the most affordable options available in the healthcare industry.

        Despite their benefits, the healthcare industry faces many challenges. Implementation of HMS still fails in some hospitals due to barriers.

        A few Challenging problems that you face while implementing HMS

        Human Challenges

        While considering human factors include

        • Awareness of HMS's advantages & importance.
        • In general, Experience and knowledge of using computer applications.
        • Impressions and Beliefs regarding HMS and making use of them efficiently.

        The researchers in a study have identified three main human challenges that are a barrier to adopting the HMS in healthcare industries.

        • There is a shortage of professional healthcare faculty with in-depth knowledge of HMS and other similar technologies.
        • Poor acceptance of HMS Software.
        • Lack of health informatics professionals capable of establishing and implementing the techniques.

        Another few significant problems for unsuccessful HMS implementation include.

        • Healthcare specialists nature,
        • the lack of time allowed for training and learning on making use of the HMS,
        • the lack of healthcare professional support, motivation, and more.

        Many studies illustrate that HMS requires more effort, time, and work. There are high chance of HMS slowing down and causing a decrease in productivity.

        Technical Challenges:

        Other technical challenges that fail the implementation of HMS in the healthcare industry include:
        • Networks and computers have different maintenance problems.
        • Lack of standards for Data entry and retrieval.
        • Difficulties in training users technically to use HMS.

        A few tips to overcome Human Challenges

        Proceed below to check out a few things you can follow to overcome the human challenges that make HMS implementation tough.

        All Medical education programs should include the significance of Hospital management system, its applications, and its advantages. One can improve the awareness of the advantages and benefits of using the HMS with a focused multi-phase approach on any topic. The system can be used from the starting level of healthcare industry schools, and colleges, then with the undergraduate degree, and through various aspects of postgraduate medical education.

        Formal training while taking various levels of medical practice and education can improve the knowledge in using a Hospital management system correctly. Many types of research suggest HMS training and teaching needs to be developed and implemented as a subject or course of the postgraduate and undergraduate medical education programs.

        Every health information management should include subjects of HMS short courses for medical education programs and healthcare professionals. These programs should be initiated by the health ministry and its formal channels for every healthcare specialist at any healthcare organization and hospital. Apart from that, developing and enhancing self-taught computer science courses in nursing education, medical schools, and postgraduate training is also essential.

        It's a good idea to develop both postgraduate and undergraduate specialized programs in Health Information Management, Health Informatics, and Health Information Technology, which increases the number of health informatics specialists and technicians.

        Overcoming the negative impressions of HMS's new and experienced staff can be neglected by developing HMS training programs and in-house hospital orientation programs.

        You can make the healthcare professional participate and be involved in various stages of system implementation, development, and deployment to improve the healthcare specialists' support.

        You can offer the healthcare professional overtime payment, direct and indirect incentives, rewards, bonuses, and more for the hospital departments and sections that implement HMS successfully in a healthcare organization.

        Offering healthcare professionals enough time is convenient and suitable for them to learn and train on HMS.

        Another good idea is to conduct different exciting training programs for healthcare professionals so that they know about HMS implementation in depth and gain a better understanding.

        Here are a few tips to overcome the Technical Challenges

        You need to ensure that the HMS commercial providers and vendors are offering the proper user manuals, documentation, troubleshooting, and guidelines for using HMS to the hospitals properly.

        Ensuring the working conditions of computers and networks is critical for the software to work better and have fewer maintenance problems. Technical support and hardware maintenance are also significant.

        You are upgrading your old communication networks and computers to new ones for enhanced performance.

        Make sure you perform every analysis required in depth before the start of the design phase and the implementation phase.

        Implementing newer innovations in both hardware and software is required to overcome data entry difficulties.

        While considering the software innovations, the system needs to be designed to support structured data entry instead of unstructured one. In the case of hardware innovations, implementing hand-held devices, touch screens, and tablet PCs helps minimize the gap between the recording and data acquisition process and leads to easier accessibility.

        Eliminating health information technology and management staff overload can be done by outsourcing a few electronic processing tasks, namely medical transcription of dictating the voice files.

        Make sure about the system interface design, and check whether they are understandable and user-friendly.

        Data standards usage is one of the crucial steps for source accuracy, quality, reliability, and validation of system data.

        Make sure you increase the computer terminal numbers at the point of care.

        The above tips will help you eliminate all challenges while implementing your Hospital information management system. Any queries or other information regarding the topics are welcome in the comments section.

        Challenges while implementing ...

         Hospital Management System has been use.....  Read more



        People in the past, ran programs or applications from the software downloaded on a server or physical computer in their building. At present, cloud computing helps people to access similar programs or applications via the internet. Cloud is everywhere, and this has taken a new avatar in the Hospital Management System too. Let’s check out the importance of cloud solutions in-depth below.

        Importance of Cloud Solution for HMS:  
        There is a lot of business that has been moving to the cloud tend to be successful. Similarly, the Hospital Management System has also seen more benefits by making use of the cloud.

        Disaster Recovery: 
        Every hospital needs to invest in resilient disaster recovery. It can be easier for larger hospitals, but what about the smaller clinics? You will need a lot of money and experience to invest in disaster recovery. One of the simple solutions is to go with the cloud. It’s now playing an essential role in Hospital Management Software, helps in avoiding significant upfront investments, saves time, and roll up experience on third parties.

        Capital-expenditure free:
        There is no need to spend the high cost of hardware when it comes to the cloud. You can choose a subscription-based model depending on your budget and start with them. Cloud adoption at your hospital management system will help to cut down the capital expenditure as well as provide ease of management and setup in a friendlier manner. 
         
        Work from anywhere:  
        Let’s imagine your doctor is far away from you, but you need to connect with them and get the right treatment. This can be easier with cloud computing. Just an internet connection is enough for your doctor to communicate with you about your problems. There are a lot of cloud services available that offer different mobile applications, and therefore, you can select your preferred mobile apps to connect.  
        It means its more flexible and versatile for your doctor to connect with you wherever he is in no time even though he is busy with other schedules. 
         
        Security:
        When it comes to the hospital, you need to be very careful in taking care of sensitive data like patient records, the treatment provided, money spent, drugs given to the patients, and more. Losing this data means there is a chance for a massive problem to occur in the future.  
        Maintaining a manual record means there are chances for the data to be lost or other similar problems. The best solution is to adopt the cloud. Yeah, when you store your sensitive clinical records and other data in the cloud, it remains safe and protected. There is no chance for any unauthorized person to access the cloud as you can protect them with an active key, and also there is no way for the data to get lost.
          
        Flexibility:
        Hospitals are businesses with fluctuating or growing bandwidth needs, and this is where cloud-based services are most suitable and mandatory. They provide a lot of benefits to the hospital management system and also hold the best advantage over your competitors.
          
        Automatic Software Updates:
        There are high chances for your hospital management system servers to get shut down or roll out of sight. If you make use of some other software to control them, it might not be more productive. Making use of the cloud in your HMS means they roll out our regular security updates as well as other software updates, so you need not worry about maintaining your HMS. You can also focus on developing your business rather than regular software updates.
          
        Increased collaboration:
        When you make use of the cloud for your HMS, your team can easily access, share, or edit documents from any time and anywhere. File-sharing applications and cloud-based workflows can make real-time updates and offer them full flexibility and versatility in their collaborations.
          
        Document control:
        With cloud computing, you can easily store all files and data centrally so that the patients, doctors, and other staff can have a look over them. Greater visibility indicates increased collaborations, and this results in a healthier bottom line and better work.
          
        Competitiveness: 
        Moving to the cloud in the case of HMS can provide access to the technology of enterprise classes for every person. It also enables the HMS to act more rapidly than its competitors. Cloud business applications for HMS remain agile and lean.

        Do you know any other essential advantages of moving to cloud solutions for HMS?
        For more information Visit MocDoc Hospital Management System

        Why should you consider a Clou...

        People in the past, ran programs or applications f.....  Read more


        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.

        Why you should never download ...

        When searching for software, almost everyone looks.....  Read more