Telehealth and telemedicine software have brought doctors and patients closer, to seemingly remove any barriers that may stand between delivering better healthcare. From eliminating transportation costs, to making emergency visits more accessible by going online and even increasing the number of health providers available at any time, telemedicine has shown various benefits in the recent past.

Telemedicine is the optimal delivery of healthcare services using modern technology such as smart devices to diagnose and treat patients. It is a software based approach that helps patients and doctors connect digitally and enables medical professionals to deliver the best care in the shortest amount of time. It is often misunderstood that telemedicine involves only making calls to doctors. Though this is not an exclusive feature, it is provided as one of the  means to communicate with the physician in some cases.

Today, telemedicine software has almost become a staple in terms of delivering healthcare. Not only because we face a global pandemic, but also because of the ease it offers to both, the doctors and the patients, in giving and receiving healthcare. 

Here are some of the benefits of telemedicine that cannot be overlooked in this technology driven era:

1. Gives patients faster access to doctors:
With mobile applications becoming the playing field for telemedicine. The power is right at the fingertips of the patients and doctors. Teleconsultation sessions can be booked at the convenience of doctors on an on-screen appointment schedule that is shown to the patients. 

Patients can instantly access the calendar on their mobile devices and pick slots as per the doctor’s allocated session and availability. Because there is no in-person interaction, the appointment scheduling is also open 24 hours a day, which means a patient can schedule an appointment whenever they like.

2. Digital Patient Health Monitoring:
Telehealth software allows you, as a doctor, to create digital case notes and manage a record of each and every consultation. The records include patient health goals, prescriptions and prescribed tests, billing and payments, follow-up schedule and care plans that the doctor may have advised for the patients to follow. 

This is usually designed to work in tandem with configurable health sheets that help in patient health monitoring. With specific case sheets and customizable templates to capture relevant patient data, the consultation is made entirely stress free. This can be owed to the fact that the best telehealth software comes with vast libraries of clinical summaries to aid doctors in their specific practice.

Patient data security is also prioritised as per the MCI guidelines and HIPAA compliance regulatory laws. This means that the practice data available on your teleconsultation software belongs only to you. Therefore, there is no chance of breaching patient information confidentiality guidelines. Video calls and messages are usually encrypted with 256 bit encryption which makes the messages nearly unattainable by third parties. If the software is integrated with your practice, it allows you, as the highest authority, to apply strict privacy and security controls to patient data.

3. Assured Digital Payments for every consultation:
Digital payment modes have taken the financial world by storm. This extends into the telehealth industry as well, giving doctors the flexibility to choose their fee amounts and arrange for digital payment methods to be active on their teleconsultation software.

Most times doctors are apprehensive about using teleconsultation software to engage with patients, mostly out of the fear of not getting paid for the consultation. This is nothing but a myth! It is common today for telehealth software to have a system which allows a patient to consult a doctor, only if the payment is completed. That way, doctors can rest easy, knowing that a consultation is taking place only under the assurance of having been paid first. 

With so many leaps in technology, payments have been made easier to complete with multiple online payment methods being built into the software. This allows patients to choose a method they are comfortable with whether it be UPI, netbanking or debit cards. Along with this, the features for automated bill generation allows for each bill payment to be recorded and added to your overall revenue generated.

4. Cost effective: 
If the teleconsultation software is integrated into or comes along with the practice management software, it is better for doctors in terms of cost effectiveness.

Telemedicine reduces overall operational costs for a doctor by making the consultations online. It also auto-generates records for digital information of the patients health condition, vitals, etc. and which eliminates the cost of maintaining paperwork too. In addition to this, the 100% digital appointment and consultation process saves time for doctors and patients, giving more footfalls of patients to doctors.

5. Easy Post Consultation Care and Rehabilitation: 
A very overlooked point of view is how after care of patients can be managed with telemedicine. The treatment of a patient is never really finished until the doctor ensures the patient completely gets rid of the illness. 

In many cases, patients require prolonged treatment and many may have to resort to remote post-consultation care techniques if they are under the care of a doctor for a major treatment. These patients benefit greatly from tele-rehabilitation services being provided over telehealth software. It helps with the smooth transition of patients back into their lives, which can be after the patient is discharged from a hospital or is back home after a surgery/procedure. Long term post-treatment home-care for patients is seen as extra value and is seeing a lot of innovation today.

Telemedicine is essentially a 21st century reimagination of delivering perfect healthcare to patients. When the most powerful devices that rest in our pockets are able to empower medical professionals and patients all the same, it is upto the technology providers to enable better healthcare for the future.

While the healthcare space is quite profitable today, its potential to generate consistent revenue relies on appropriate administrative methods and improved finance management. Clinics often ignore the rate at which the operating costs may rise and this is likely to put pressure on the staff to manage more than they can handle. Infact, the challenges that these organizations may face lie in an entirely different realm of possibilities, thus leading to massive revenue losses over time. 

Where most medical practitioners chase the bottom line of avoiding revenue losses, they are misled by the old ways of administrative clinic management. This means that doctors may sometimes fail to address the factors that truly cause revenue losses.

1. Lack of Workflow Automation:
Automated clinical workflows achieved by the installation of a Practice Management Software have become the norm in recent years. Every clinic must have an automation solution that assists in delivering better and faster healthcare that allows doctors to handle appointments, clinical workflows, and patient engagement and data at the click of a button. 

These automated workflows are designed to adapt to the doctors style of practice and identify patterns in consultations & appointments by providing suggestions as the doctors work. This makes the consultation process, patient history evaluation, diagnostics, reporting and prescribing medication cumulatively faster. 

The lack of such a digital workflow automation would make the practice less productive and therefore rake in less money. When most of a doctor’s time is spent in retrieving patient history from a filing cabinet or in the re-evaluation of a returning patient’s illness using paper records, there is a lot of money lost along with the time spent on tedious activities. Not only is this counterintuitive to running a practice; patient loyalty takes a massive hit and can dent the reputation of the business.

2. Incorrect billing practices:
Incorrect billing can severely affect the bottom line of a practice. In a manner of sorts, this can be attributed to a lack of productivity or a burden on the receptionist to handle damage control every time a procedure or service is erroneously charged for. 

It leads to administrative staff letting go of more practical tasks at hand and spending time fixing the time-consuming errors while responding to grievances from patients. This leaves a bitter impression on the staff as well as prospective returning patients and can in extreme cases lead to legal trouble. 

For example, if a patient is charged for a procedure he didn’t request, it can be viewed as a fraudulent practice. Similarly, if a patient is not charged for a treatment that he availed, it is a monetary loss for the practice.

3. Lack of Online bookings and Automated Patient Registrations:
The online consultation and appointment booking space has been completely digitized as of today. There is even a deviation in the old trend of having to book an appointment by making calls. This is primarily due to the increased pace at which treatment is delivered and the immediacy that patients require to book an appointment. 

A practice management software can today offer completely online appointment options for patients by allowing them to choose an available slot as per the clinic’s schedule and convenience. Healthcare is an industry which runs on the urgency of the service provided. So making it efficient and effortless for both the patients and clinicians is necessary. Lack of automation that enables online booking management can lead to an image of complacency and therefore lead to a reduced inflow of patients. 

Software vendors therefore offer doctors a proprietary mobile application with the clinic management software that allows doctors to engage with patients from anywhere and at any time. They also offer an application made specifically for patients to help with consultations more urgently. When patients receive the acknowledgement of a doctor within time, it boosts patient satisfaction and loyalty.

4. Overstaffing:
When the going gets tough… practices may recruit more employees to micromanage each and every aspect of the clinic. While the initial impressions may lead to higher patient satisfaction scores and increased staff morale, over time this trend may become very expensive for the practice. 

With having to pay excess to hired staff, revenue generated may be constant but the expenditure may increase. This tips the scales negatively and affects the bottom line. Automating the practice with a clinic management software is the best solution to have menial tasks be automated using AI algorithms and the priority work be taken up with worthy and efficient staff members. This reduces labor costs and improves ROI.

5. Petty Thefts and Inventory Mismanagement:
Pilferages and petty theft can be detrimental to a practice. It’s one of the few instances where having a ‘once bitten, twice shy’ attitude will be profitable and help re-evaluate employee reservation and termination statuses. 

Whether it is a syringe, a vial or even rubbing alcohol, you need to make it clear to your staff that any kind of theft is grounds for termination and a criminal offence. It’s always good to keep the bigger picture in mind while taking administrative decisions such as this. In the long run, any staff member who resorts to stealing can cause a hole in the revenue generated which cannot be recovered. 

Inventory mismanagement and miscalculations in the finances allotted for inventory costs can also lead to severe financial downfalls. Since clinical inventory is expensive and must be reported upon usage or depletion. The best way to avoid such mishaps is to ensure the presence of an inventory management module within the practice management software that your clinic relies on. It helps get in-depth reports and analysis of daily operations, inventory used or purchased and spends/profits and losses incurred on the above.

It’s surprising how one seemingly tiny loophole can cause a ripple effect and perpetually uproot a practice due to mismanagement of resources, time and financial negligence. These problems are easily avoided with the latest offering in telemedicine and assistive technology of the same caliber. It’s always good to have a practice management system that is tailored to your requirements and can increase revenue in a carefree manner.

Medical practices today are seeing increased patient footfalls across the world. This can not only be chalked out to the global healthcare emergency, but also a general sense of awareness of one’s health. In tandem with the above, clinicians and medical practitioners now feel an urgency to deliver better healthcare on an independent level.

To ensure high standards of patient care, means to be efficient in one’s craft as a practicing doctor, having trained staff and having a technically optimized practice. Achieving the latter can be best managed with a ‘Cloud Based Practice Management Software’. The benefits of having a cloud based software range from increased revenue, to improved clinic efficiency and streamlined clinical workflows to improve the standard of patient care.

Why choose a Cloud Based Practice Management Software?
With the pace at which practice management software development and improvement is going, emerging medical technologies have become the norm in a fast moving world aiming to achieve better patient care. 

Cloud based software coupled with AI And Machine Learning are powerful tools being used in every branch of business, and its implementation in clinic management has improved patient satisfaction while also making the lives of doctors and medical staff much easier and more profitable.

So if you are on the fence about a cloud based system, the following reasons may convince you to get a Cloud Based Practice Management System installed:

1. Easy to Customise:
The best way to achieve efficiency at your practice is to adopt technology that can be customised to the way your clinic operates. When your clinic management software is centered to handle the parameters specific to your practice, there won’t be a need to look elsewhere for solutions to manage your practice better. 

Always opt for a Clinic Management Software that offers customisations. You’ll find that there are a few that come with all the necessary tools and libraries of clinical summaries that are suited to your specialty. For example, the needs of a diabetologist may vary from those of an orthopedic specialist and will require examination casesheets, prescription formats, medicines lists of the same nature. Apart from this, these clinic management software come with the necessary billing tools, patient data repositories and data security controls that can also be customised as per your requirements.

2. User Friendliness:
If the software isn’t user friendly, it adds a steep learning curve to something that should be fairly easy. Which is why the Clinic Management Software that you choose must be easy to use, quick to get started with, and simple to understand by even the less trained staff at the clinic.

A software offers a real quick start if has the following features:

– Requires Minimal Training sessions:
It should be as simple as you pay for the subscription and get started. An easy software ensures you begin using it without having to put your practice and services on hold until you and your staff are trained. 

– Intuitive Graphical Interface:
A visually rich and interactive representation of the medical conditions help you better evaluate patients and provide them with a better understanding of it.

– AI and Machine Learning capabilities: 
Now this is a highly valuable feature! If a software is able to identify meaningful patterns in your daily consultation and adapts to it to give you auto-suggestions for diagnosis and medications, your practice becomes much faster and efficient.

– Ability to generate financial reports:
Generates a monthly summary for expenses incurred and profits gained. Also keeps a file for staff salaries based on hierarchy, increments, bonuses or absences and helps manage inventory costs.

– Offers end-to-end Automation:
Specifically to reduce paperwork and thereby labor costs by automating most managerial practices.

Your vendor must also provide you a dedicated software account manager to help you automate all clinical processes and provide personalized assistance at every step. This is a sign of dedication to user friendliness.

3. Online and Offline Functionality:
With a cloud based system, clinics can leverage unlimited cloud storage for daily management of practice data and patient data. To add to this, having a hybrid model of Clinic Management Software ensures that your practice never stops even when there’s an internet outage. An automatic data sync feature must be included in the case of internet connectivity or downtime issues.

Stable internet may sometimes be finicky, and to avoid any hitches in running your practice, it’s best to be able to work offline and online as well. This is why a good practice management software helps you get work done even during an internet outage by allowing you to work offline and then syncing up your data automatically when the internet resumes.

4. Mobile Apps for Doctors as well as Patients:
Mobile applications of a clinic management software allow you to access and manage every aspect of your practice in a portable manner all on your smartphone or tablet device. This lets you work remotely and flexibly while making the day less tasking and allowing you to prioritize patients at your convenience with a single click.  

Everything you need can be taken care of through your mobile, such as: 

• Patient appointments
• Clinical workflows
• Patient engagement and consultations
• Prescription renewal or updation
• Patient data management and security

All of these functionalities can be accessed remotely and digitally, even when you’re on-the-go or away from your clinic

5. Global Standard Data Security:
Of course, patient data security is a priority. Every Practice Management Software must adhere to the HIPAA healthcare compliance and must have end-to-end 256 bit data encryption on the cloud  with two factor authorization across devices that are trusted. This is to facilitate complete patient data security so that you can assure your patient data isn’t used maliciously. For this, software vendors allot secure, login IDs and unique passwords to select trusted staff. 

These facilities are now must-haves and are absolutely essential when adopting a digital software to manage and control your practice and provide patient reliability. 

Ultimately, a Practice Management Software is a transformative tool that will make your clinic leaps and bounds better for patient care and prepare it for the future of healthcare with digital solutions that are easy to use, cost effective, secure and unique to your requirements.

In a world driven by innovation and invention, foremost medical professionals often highlight the contribution of technology in the hospital industry and how it has resulted in providing an improved ROI. It has not just introduced modern methods to fastrack hospital operations but has also helped in evolving medical services by automating management processes. So if you are considering to invest in a Hospital Management System, you are on the perfect track. A Hospital Information Management System has set the foundation for hospitals to optimise tasks, enhance patient care, reduce turnaround time and improve business ROI.

But how do you identify the need for an HIMS for your Hospital? And more importantly, what should you consider before investing in this software? How do you differentiate between the right and wrong product for your hospital? 

The answer lies in the thorough analysis of the products available in the market, their benefits, feasibility with your setup and how they can be customised to your medical business needs. But before you take that leap of faith, here is a thought starter to focus on:

1. Identify your Hospital’s requirements
Subject to internal functioning, every hospital has different administrative problems to manage. An HMS can vary in its offerings based on the scale of your hospital and its varying functionalities. Your requirements can be estimated based on the size (bed count) of your hospital, number of staff, the services and the facilities that you offer (radiology, pathology, OPD consultation, etc.) and whether your hospital is a multispecialty or superspecialty based on various operating departments. 

In a nutshell, your Hospital Management System will help you create a coherent network that brings all departments on a single digital platform and help streamline the entire hospital’s operational processes by automating them.

If you are not sure how to address this, start with asking:

• What operational challenges are you currently facing?
• Are all your processes manual? Is yes, how are they impacting your services?
• How do you monitor your staff and keep a check on the transactions?
• Why do you think automation can solve your challenges? 
• What budget do you think you can comfortably invest in a software?
• Why do you think this is the right time for you to invest in an HIMS?

2. List down your challenges in detail
Like any business, obstacles need to be dealt on different levels and different departments. Primarily by using an HIMS you can rectify management issues pertaining to all departments – in-patient, out-patient, operation theatre, nursing, insurance, NABH compliance, lab, asset, inventory, pharmacy, and more.

Identifying the loopholes can help you get customized solutions to address your business specific concerns.

Evaluate and make a checklist of the must-have features based on the challenges you are facing. It could be lack of digitisation of documents or the need to revamp a lethargic Patient Care service or a better Finance management or even a secured accessibility of sensitive information. Here are some most preferred features:

• Eliminating the need for paperwork.
• Controlling equipment downtime with timely preventive maintenance checks.
• Tracking quarterly/ bi-annually/ annual maintenance expenses.
• Simplifying work-order management by working digitally (like on a computer or on mobile phones).
• Ability to automate billing.
• Calendar system for planning schedules of OT and Doctors.
• Improving communication between various departments.

3. Questions you must ask about the product
On identifying the necessity for a Hospital Management Software, research for the best vendors, most suitable product and price plan as per your requirement. 

Resolve your doubts by asking questions.

Here are some preliminary questions you must ask the shortlisted vendors:

• Will they provide the HIMS Demo?
• Which flexible pricing plan is recommended for me and why?
• Can the plans be customised as per my requirements?
• Can I upgrade my plans with business growth?
• How complicated or time consuming is the installation procedure
• What about the customer support system after on-boarding
• How easy is it to use the software?
• What are the available staff training programs the vendor can organize to learn the software effectively?

It’s imperative for any hospital administration to understand and know the best tools for its staff members and patients. While some organisations may need a higher degree of patient engagement; others may only require a few patient-centered features and the basic automation of redundant tasks.

Shortlisting an ideal HIMS vendor is indeed a difficult task. Ensuring that you are prepared is the key to making the right decision. Don’t forget to check the reviews and ratings of the vendors you evaluate. It will further ease out your selection process. 

In case you are new to all this, take expert advice and ensure that you invest in an HIS software which suits your requirements best.

The medical records department of a hospital is perhaps the most vital department in the system that keeps the hospital running as a well oiled machine. But in today’s day and age, having the hospital staff sift through cabinets and shelves full of folders of sensitive and highly confidential data can lead to multiple unwanted situations such as misfiling of patient information, error in retrieval of information, loss of productivity and mismanagement of time between tasks since most of the staff’s time will be spent looking for relevant data.
Today, with the evolution of digital healthcare technology solutions; Digital MRD, EHR and EMR have grown and gained popularity because of their ability to solve all the challenges listed above. The solution to run a Digital MRD comes in the form of a Document Management Software (DMS) and is perhaps the most sought after technology in hospitals today. So why should you get one for your hospital?

1. To Digitise your Hospital’s MRD – for increased efficiency in workflow and productivity:
Modern day document management systems make sure your hospital works smart using the cutting-edge AI and ML algorithms for managing patient records digitally. With the ability to pace-up document scanning, to automatically index patient information and to map the records into preset document types and categories, a DMS conveniently accelerates the record management process that enhances the overall efficiency with an advanced integrated Document management Software, the entire hospital’s departments can be interconnected to help manage all medical records and workflows end-to-end on a single digital platform. This makes it easier for medical personnels, from authorized doctors to nurses and paramedics, to search, locate, retrieve and view any patient documents or files instantly through the centralized patient data repository.
This digital integration eliminates the need of any other software that the medical staff may use to refer to a patient’s past history, and saves time which is otherwise spent in manual file transfers from one department to the other.

2. Security and Data Privacy:
Patient data is highly sensitive and is treated as crucially confidential material that cannot by any means leave the confines of the hospital or mishandled. This is why a DMS is designed to store the patient data in a secure in-house server where the data access is strictly governed by Rules Engines.

• A Document Management Software allows staff to access, manage or edit these patient files only based on the authorizations provided to them by the management.
• Most software also allows for the configuration of these rights at a group or individual level for the staff in the hospital. This means that rights can be defined easily based on the categories of the staff members.

Another level of security is added based on the document tracking and monitoring technology which is available to you in the form of an activity log. This way, your hospital never loses track of its digitized MRD. With the activity log, you can digitally monitor who accessed, edited, changed or retrieved a document along with its time details. This makes every staff member accountable for their actions on any document.

3. Medical Coding compliance:
It looks almost impossible to control the chaos and bring order for documents management within a hospital. Add to all of it the strict medical compliances that govern the medical records upkeep. The solution to a lot of these lies in a document management software. Most of today’s document management software have in-built features that help you manage these effortlessly. The in-built features for patient history retention and disposition, file discard policies, audit-trails, strict role-based security controls help you stay in adherence with various complex HIPAA laws and others medical codings compliance like

• ICD – International Classification of Diseases
• ICHI – International Classification of Health Interventions
• CPT – Current Procedural Terminology
• MLC – Medico Legal Cases

4. To reduce Scope of errors & misplaced documents:
Misplacing files, misidentifying patients, misinformation about patient conditions among staff can cause catastrophic failures in a hospital. These errors can be minimized or completely eliminated with the implementation of a Document Management Software. Cabinets full of patient documents  make it tedious to look for and record patient information. It also leads to the reckless misplacing of patient documentation. File identification errors can have serious consequences in the realm of treatments. If a patient is misidentified or misdiagnosed, the doctors responsible for the treatment could be held liable in the court of law and the hospital would incur severe legal repercussions for the same.

To avoid the entire fiasco of misinformation and legal trouble, the digitization of these documents now allow hospitals to securely scan and log all of the patient information using the unique patient ID. The information pertaining to a particular patient is appended to the right Id automatically with distinct episode-wise or visit-wise classifications.

4.1 To Create Smart Searchable Documents:
The smart document search features further helps staff to locate the required files instantly across all document types. While doctors can request any file digitally and receive permission to access it on the portal itself, in the cases where physical files are needed, the transfer of the same is also logged in the system along with the time details. This eliminates possibilities of file misplacement.

5. To Generate Readily Available Data for ClinicalResearch:
When you have the hold of a patient’s entire medical history, and are constantly updating their information on the database as per their treatment, the hospital is bound to come up on volumes and volumes of important information that can seemingly help in clinical research. A DMS allows you to extract various reports based on the types of medical conditions reported in the hospital, treatment provided, medicines prescribed, no. of patients cured, and more. All this is available at a click without any manual efforts required for reports preparation. This system gives the hospital an auto-generated analysis of the medical data collected over a period of time, in the form of Medical information system reports or in the form of graphical representations.
In other words, the health trends of patients across a certain amount of time can provide valuable information to research in coming up with effective ways to deliver advanced healthcare.

With functionality and accessibility to patient data being secured on integrated networks, there is also the space for mHealth – mobile health. With many vendors adopting various new methods to safeguard and manage patient information, it will be very interesting to see where further developments are made in the space of document management in hospitals.