SIDGS’ Information Technology Blog

Healthcare Information System (HIS)? What’s in it for me as a healthcare provider? How does it help me provide cost-effective quality services during this downturn economy?

As a healthcare provider running a group/single physician medical practice, how do you make sure you are running your practice to be competent and meet the 21st century healthcare demands and expectations in this down turn economy? Well, for any healthcare/medical organization in this era, the name of the game is HIS systems. HIS is the cost-effective solution that supports like a backbone, to help provide services in this competitive and demanding world. HIS can be compared to an ERP in many ways, as much as an ERP is essential to manage your Financials, Human Resources, Sales, Marketing etc in today’s world, HIS systems are important for a healthcare provider to manage patient records, patient registration, insurance and billing, patient access, images, prescriptions, inventory etc. In short, an HIS system is a solution to create and manage Electronic Medical Records (EMR) of the patients that encapsulates all the required information.

What is an EMR? An EMR is a record that is composed of Electronic Health Records (EHR) of the patients and other administrative and financial information like appointment schedules, billing details etc.

There are primarily two types of HIS systems.

1. HIS for Hospitals
2. HIS for Clinics (Group or Single Physician Practices) – They are also called Medical Practice Management Systems

There are comprehensive and matured HIS solutions that support large enterprise multi-chain hospitals of varying sizes right now. But, there are hardly any reliable, proven and comprehensive HIS solutions for Clinics and small/mid size healthcare organizations.

Ok, enough of technology talks, this should have given you decent idea of HIS. To explain the HIS and EMR in detail, it’s going to take a whole big article for itself. So, let’s go straight to our primary question “What’s in it for me as a healthcare provider?”.

Ok, let’s start at the pain points or actual issues that you face in today’s world, while trying to provide quality health services.

• You practice out of multiple clinics, it’s a good way to reach out and provide your services to broader communities, but ever experienced trouble sharing patient records across these clinics. Sounds like a very familiar issue that you experience? Yes, it’s a big issue today for the practices with multiple clinics, especially when patients schedule their appointments across these multiple clinics randomly due to the convenience, doctor’s availability, patient’s schedule etc.
• You are a busy healthcare provider and you are having issues managing your time efficiently? Are you over-booked or under-booked significant amount of hours a week? Again, this is one of the most common issues, today’s medical practitioners are facing.
• You are a dedicated and quality healthcare provider and you want to provide best medical services possible for your patients at lower costs? But, you are not able to make enough justice to your patients and your profession because of bulky, unorganized health records of the patients charted and filed using paper based systems? You feel, it takes forever to find the patient health history/information while browsing through all that paper work in the patient’s file? Have you ever experienced the issue of not being able to get to the critical healthcare information of your patients on-time, the information that is hidden deep in that bulky paper work filed in the patient’s files? Studies show that, this is a common and high patient risk issue which needs to be addressed for better quality and legal issues.
• Malpractice issues
• HIPAA compliancy issues

Following are some of the many reasons why you need this type of solution. These are the answers for what’s it in me question. These are the solutions for the above listed issues that you face on daily basis.

• Ability to access patient records across multiple clinics of your practice. This will help you access patient records from any location. It doesn’t matter where you are, working out of one of your clinics, on-call at home or at a friend’s place; the records are at your fingertips for you to access in a secured environment.
• Scheduling process becomes easier and efficient by using HIS systems. You can plan your time in advance and record your plans (e.g. your weekly availability fluctuations, vacations, holidays, extra available time etc) so that registration clerk can schedule patients to efficiently utilize your time. Your practice will have better control on patient cancellations, delays, no-showups etc for more effective utilization of your time. This also gives ability to manage your schedule from any location and time.
• Ability to quickly review patient’s critical health records like allergies, medication, major health issues; a patient dashboard for quick and comprehensive snapshot of patient’s health. This feature really helps you by emphasizing some of this critical patient information during the treatment and thereby cutting down length of your sessions with each patient.
• Many malpractice issues can be avoided using HIS systems as they will help you make sure to follow all the approved clinical workflows and record all the events and data during the process.
• HIS systems keep your practice or healthcare organization compliant with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Protected Health Information (PHI).

Right HIS solution should help you operate more efficiently and effectively which translates into 20% to 40% increase in revenues through cost savings and being able to handle higher patient volume.

As explained in this article, it’s most important for medical practices to adopt a suitable HIS solution to provide cost-effective quality services in this era. If you need more information on this topic, please feel free to email me at venkat.madip@sidglobal.net or post your questions or comments here.

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