Benefits of Healthcare Management Solutions

With the ever growing pressure on the healthcare industry, the need for healthcare management solutions is also on the rise. It is believed by industry experts that all the healthcare industry facets tend to benefit from healthcare management solutions.

It is not only important to bring about improvement in the quality of patient service but also to make reasonable profits. This is the only way that you can ensure that your medical facility remains competitive in the medicine industry. This requires you to come up with cost cutting strategies that will help you realize maximum profits at the end of the day. Using healthcare management solutions to manage your facility provides you with a simple way of reducing the cost of operation.

With the implementation of healthcare management solutions, you will be able to reduce the number of staff in your organization, and that will be directly translated into your total expenditure. You will also be able to reduce the number of staff that attends to one patient at the same time. These extra workers can be re-deployed at other locations within the facility that have less labor supply. That way, you will be able to improve the performance of the staff in your organization.

Certified EMR in a Meaningful Way

Certifed EMR ensures the end users that they are not investing their money on something that may not be helpful to them. Also, physicians shopping for an EMR don’t want to risk purchasing something that won’t meet the stimulus criteria.

The incentives can not be just claimed by using a certified emr, however, the certified EMR needs to be used in a "meaningful way".  According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), "meaningful use" is defined as using an EMR for the following objectives:

• Improving quality, safety, efficiency, care coordination, population and public health;

• Reducing health disparities;

• Engaging patients and their families; and,

• Ensuring adequate privacy and security protections for personal health information

What is a certified EMR?

A certified EMR is a software that has acquired certification from ONC ATCB (Approved Testing and Certification Body). It is a process of getting the software tested on various parameters as stated by ONC (Office of the National Coordinator). The software is called ONC-ATCB Certified EMR Software

The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC), established and funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) HITECH Act, is in place to set initial standards, implementation specifications and certification criteria for EHR technology under the CMS EHR Incentive Program.

With the ONC standards in place, providers can be assured that the ONC certified  EMR technology they adopt is capable of performing the required functions to comply with CMS’ meaningful use objectives.

Improve Productivity and Quality of Service With EMR

The healthcare practice has to face endless amount of paperwork from past as well as present patients. Handling a huge file of charts is a very daunting job that usually consumes a major portion of the productive time of healthcare professionals.

Today, thanks to the modern technology, there is no need for you to worry about filing huge numbers of paperwork into your patient's charts. With the use of EMR (electronic medical records), you can easily update the patient data and all other information regarding their health within your computer and save this important information at the same time.

EMR (electronic medical record) helps to save time, which ultimately helps to serve more number of patients there by adding to the productivity of the practice. The time saved also helps to concentrate more on the patient service - thereby reducing chances of medical errors and bringing about improvement in the quality of patient service.

Important considerations when researching for EMR

EMR software ensures to make life easier for both doctors as well as patients, however, achievement of this ultimate goal to a large extent depends on selection of a right EMR for the practice.

Choosing from the wide variety of EMR applications available today on the market is no easy task. Cutting down the list of EMR software providers to a manageable level is the first thing you should do in order to make choosing the right EMR system vendor. Here are some considerations when researching your purchase of an EMR software system:

Certified EMR - A certified EMR has to pass through rigorous testing and quality standards process, ensuring a solid EMR software choice. Using a certified EMR is also important to receiving Federal Stimulus incentives.

Meaningful Use Knowledge - Ensuring that your EMR software vendor is incredibly well-versed in the concept of "Meaningful Use" is absolutely critical to any system purchase. The Federal Government stipulates that you must demonstrate "meaningful use" of your electronic medical record system.

Ease Of Use - The overall expense of adopting an EMR has so much to do with the ease of its use that it is frightening. Simple to use products cost far less to train your staff on, as well as slash future support costs in half or more.

ONC Certified EMR

ONC stands for Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act directs Office of National Coordinator to promote the meaningful use of EHR technology nationwide. Under the program, firstly to be an ONC-ATCB, the applicants need to pass through certain criteria.

Currently, the six organizations recognized by ONC as ATCBs are:

    * CCHIT
    * Drummond Group
    * InfoGard Laboratories Inc.
    * SLI Global Solutions
    * ICSA Labs
    * Surescripts LLC

And why should the healthcare provider choose ONC certified EMR tested product? It is beneficial for any provider under the Medicare and Medicaid EHR incentive program to claim their incentives of adopting the healthcare technology. It would provide confidence to the physicians in the capabilities of the product that they plan to adopt.

ONC with its "ONC certified EMR" of meaningful use is tremendously supporting the nation's move towards secured and functional exchange of healthcare information, benefiting both the technology provider and the healthcare provider.

Benefits of Online Patient Scheduling

 

The traditional method of patient scheduling is a time consuming and hectic activity. A doctor / staff has to look for the available time slot for the patient, schedule it and inform the patient. The process may require a no. of corrections, rescheduling and so on. All this puts a lot of burden on the doctors and their staff, which ultimately affects productivity and patient service. More over, with the traditional system a patient is able to fix up an appointment with the doctor only during practice hours. 

 Compared to paper-based scheduling system, an effective online patient scheduling system is quicker and easier to manage. Doctors benefit from new technology on the market that allows their practices to be more cost-efficient and productive. Whereas, patients are benefited from online patient scheduling system as regards the flexibility in getting their appointments fixed up at any point of time irrespective of practice hours.