What is a Hospital Management System (HMS) & its Essential Modules
April 21, 2022The healthcare industry has witnessed dramatic changes in the past years. The way functions happen and the services are delivered, quite a lot has changed. Earlier, every formality used to be written on paper. Gone are those days. Instead, they have now been replaced with the latest technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, etc. This has given rise to a hospital management system (HMS). Let us look into the essential modules of HMS and why they are essential to hospitals today.
Essential modules of a hospital management system
Patient registration
Without hospital management software, hospitals may suffer since they can easily lose manually written notes in case of an unfavourable situation. HMS is essential to hospitals for patient registration. The features of this module include:
- Registration of the patient wherein every patient is assigned a unique medical record number that is digitally uploaded into the system.
- Pre-existing patient documents, medical records, and their insurance-related information are taken note of and uploaded into the system as well.
- Depending on the urgency of the situation, patients are auto-tagged as regular, emergency, or VIP cases, etc., as necessary.
Electronic Health records (EHR)
EHRs are data related to the patients stored in a secure and centralised database that can be accessed by authorised hospital staff. Apart from just storing their information, Electronic Health Records Software also store medical records of the patients that help hospital staff in giving the patients a better service. What’s more, EMRs are digitally shared across every department a patient visits, thus, reducing the chances of any errors.
Some of the details included in the EHRs are:
- Demographics of the patients, their medical history, and other details.
- Their vital signs and information on allergies.
- Insurance related information.
- Ongoing patient care plans for both inpatients and patients at home make it easier for hospitals to follow up with them.
- Lab results and hospital notes.
- Discharge summaries for patients who have checked out.
In-patient department:
This module of the HMS helps hospitals in streamlining different processes within and providing their patients with optimised service. Patients regularly visit hospitals for appointments.
If they are suggested surgery or any other procedure, they come back another day. When they do come back, the hospital management system assists staff in automatically marking them as an inpatient and adds their information to the log. This automated feature helps the employees in preparing schedules and managing appointments as well as surgeries.
Out-patient department:
Through this module, the doctors can access a patient’s past history and prescriptions with them. They may also access other information such as:
- Patient illness history.
- Patient problems and allergies.
- Patient diagnosis notes and image charts, etc.
Inventory tracking system:
It is extremely important for hospitals to keep track of everything in their inventory. The inventory contains all the essentials such as equipment, medical supplies, etc., that require replenishing on a frequent basis. It is indeed a huge task. This is where the hospital management system comes in handy. The inventory module contains these features:
- Items are labelled with their name, size, and colour and tagged accordingly.
- First In First Out: Products in the inventory with the nearest expiration dates are marked accordingly so that they are used at the earliest.
- Hazardous supplies are marked and stored separately.
- Every product is assigned a unique ID to avoid duplications.
Vaccination modules:
This module assists a hospital in keeping its immunisation data up to date. If any patient vaccinations are due, the patient is informed and an appointment is automatically scheduled. Hospitals can also choose to send reminders to the patients.
Communication with the patient:
To ensure every patient is satisfied with the service is every hospital’s goal. It is also the most important task of managing a hospital. This module helps patients stay updated with the latest hospital updates through promotional emails and texts. It can also notify them about their appointments with the doctors.
Also Read: Best practices to improve patient flow in the clinic
Billing:
This feature of the HMS assists hospitals in staying updated with everything related to billing such as payments, invoices, receipts, and other costs. Features of the billing module include:
- New bill for every new patient.
- Reconciliation features simplify the payment process.
- Both outstanding and upcoming bills are displayed in this module.
- Custom billing reports can be created.
Insurance:
Insurance is one of the most important processes in a hospital. Hospital Management Software reduces the chances of false claims and improves productivity and accuracy. What’s more, it also improves turnaround rates in regard to the claim submissions, etc. Some of the top features in the insurance module are:
- Tracking of the claim history.
- Changes between the clinician, admin staff, and the coder can be tracked and liaised.
- Both manual and automated pre-authorisation of request creation, etc.
Benefits of having a hospital management system
- Consolidating all the patient data becomes relatively easier as everything is centralised.
- This helps the doctors retrieve patient info quickly and save time.
- Most HMS are aligned with insurance services; settling claims becomes easy.
- HMS allows for upgrades without increasing the need to hire more employees.
- Ultimately, it leads to more savings and happier patients.
Conclusion
Hospital management software can be beneficial to hospitals to succeed in their practices and provide their patients with the best service possible. Regardless of whether you are starting fresh or upgrading your systems, we highly recommend you to consider having an HMS in your facility.
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