Five Best Features of Healthcare Management Systems
Running a medical facility requires juggling a lot of moving parts, ensuring that nothing slips. Between ordering supplies, receiving patient calls, seeing in-clinic patients, processing referrals, and doing other work, healthcare practices must stay on track and have an efficient system for completing tasks.
Using a clinical trial management system is an option, as healthcare facilities have the chance to assess how the system may impact their workflow. Between easier access to patient records, appointment bookings, and online patient messages, there are many advantages to using such systems.
Whether you are deciding to trial a healthcare management system, or you want to upgrade your present system, you may be curious about the most useful features that are now available.
Below are the five best features of healthcare management systems.
1. Robust Provider Directory
Most healthcare systems are now getting a lot larger, as smaller doctor’s offices and medical practices are integrated into larger institutions. If your clinic is part of such a business, then you must have a robust directory of all the providers that are available to patients as part of your network.
Perhaps a patient comes to see their primary care provider about the pain they are experiencing. The doctor may recommend they see a specialist, but the patient would not be sure where they can book an appointment with this type of specialist.
Rather than asking the patient to search online, staff could use the provider directory to quickly find out what specialists accept the patient’s insurance within your organization.
2. Access to a Patient Portal
Another feature that must be a part of healthcare management systems is patient messages through an online portal. Patients should have the chance to sign up for an online service, where they can receive information about their upcoming visits to your clinic.
Not only would such a portal allow them to see when they are next coming in for an appointment, but they could access details about previous visits, lab results, doctor’s notes, and much more. Patients could even send messages if they need assistance from the staff at a clinic.
As an example, a patient may need to have a prior authorization done for a medication. They can send a message to the clinic staff, who can then process the request and message the patient when they receive an answer from the insurance company.
3. Periodic Health Checkups
A healthcare management system that includes the ability to automatically alert providers and patients about upcoming health checkups would be very useful. Such a system could inform the provider when the patient is due for a wellness checkup, colonoscopy, breast cancer screening, routine lab tests, and much more.
This information can be updated by the provider, indicating if the patient is at risk for a particular condition. The system would then ask for the patient to get specific checkups more frequently, but everything would still happen automatically.
Not only do patients benefit from such a feature, as they can easily stay on top of their health, but medical facilities increase their business through patients getting frequent checkups with the doctor or specialists.
4. Patient Health Record Maintenance
A vital component of any healthcare management system is the comprehensive collection and access to patient health records. When a patient joins a particular practice, their profile is set up by staff. All personal and relevant health information is included, while the record updates each time the patient comes in for a visit.
Patient health records should include information such as recent lab results, appointment details, patient messages to staff or providers, medications prescribed by the provider currently and in the past, and other vital information.
Such records are extremely useful, as they can easily be accessed from any device within the network. Providers can also forward patient health records to specialists, with the approval of the patient.
5. Customization Options
The best healthcare management systems are the ones that include plenty of customization options. As an example, staff who are using the HMS may want to create smart phrases that allow them to easily enter a lot of information within seconds.
Smart phrases can be very useful in a healthcare setting, as staff often have to give generic information to patients when they receive an inquiry about making a new appointment, setting up a follow-up, or coming in to receive an injection.
Rather than typing out an entire paragraph each time, staff could type a short smart phrase, and the HMS would populate the rest of the message automatically.
