Hospital Management System: A Detailed Guide

Quick Summary: Hospitals can manage patient information and various processes with feature-rich software systems. The hospital management system (HMS) is such software that provides a seamless approach to managing the operations of an entire hospital and improving patient experience. This blog sheds light on such HMS along with its benefits, types, features, modules, and other useful information. Keep reading to know more.

Dealing with a large influx of patients is overwhelming for hospitals that still run on paper-based systems. Such a system is not just inefficient but also risky for a field where every second is important. Even a minor delay or fault can cause severe damage.

However, today’s healthcare providers utilize technology to avoid such scenarios and offer better medical services. Hospitals and other healthcare centers are now adopting hospital management systems (HMS) to efficiently manage their patient records and streamline operations. Many medical service providers, therefore, prefer custom healthcare software development to build solutions that are tailored per their requirements.

Such customized HMS solutions provide a convenient way to manage patient information and access it universally in the organization, hence reducing the administrative burden. In this blog, we will cover everything about HMS to help you make informed decisions in the field of healthcare.

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What is a Hospital Management System?

A hospital management system is software that allows medical staff to collect, store, retrieve, and share patient information securely across the hospital. It helps with better patient care and processing medical records such as radiology images, lab tests, blood reports, and pharmacy records efficiently. So, it provides an ecosystem of software applications and tools that allow physicians, labs, technicians, nurses, and other medical staff to quickly obtain the desired data and make the right decisions.

According to a study, doctors spend 49.2% of their time doing paperwork that wastes patients’ time. Although paperwork is unavoidable in hospitals, the burden on doctors and medical staff can be reduced through automated processes and systems. In such cases, hospital management system or HMS is the apt option to adopt for seamlessly managing the processes and operations.

How Does a Hospital Management System Work?

Let us give you a real-life example of how hospital software systems work:

To schedule a visit, a new patient reaches out to the hospital. The healthcare CRM software registers the patient and documents all communications with this patient, including but not limited to notes, assigned doctors, and phone call logs, as soon as the front desk arranges a meeting. A text message or an automated call by the hospital CRM software also alerts the patient about the scheduled appointment.

Afterward, the administrator sets up appointments using a doctor directory that tracks available physicians, suggests a suitable professional, and provides their contact information. In general, it works as a contacts app integrated with a calendar that shows doctors’ schedules.

Then, a doctor enters all patient information into an EHR system while the patient is present. The EHR system saves the complete medical history of the patient.

Now suppose the physician advises our hypothetical patient to have a lab test. The EHR component of the hospital management system software notifies the staff by communicating with the lab software. And the lab's hospital inventory management software simultaneously verifies that it has all the medications and resources to conduct the test. Moreover, all the test results are automatically added to the patient’s medical record.

Last but not least, throughout these interactions, the accounting software updates the patient's bill while considering their health insurance.

Obviously, this is a very simplified instance of how smart hospital management solutions work, but we hope it helps you get the point.

Popular Benefits of Hospital Management System

Hospitals and healthcare centers get a streamlined approach to their processes with the use of a sophisticated system like HMS. The following are the main advantages of the hospital management system.

1. Improved Services: Patients can experience better hospital services with facilities like appointment booking, access to medical records on the go, receive reminders, and more.

2. Secured Processes: Another benefit of the hospital management software development is that it allows for a secure IT infrastructure that allows the secure movement of patient data.

3. Lower Turnaround Time: Every minute matters in critical times. Good hospital management systems reduce turnaround time in patient care with streamlined workflow and automation.

4. Quick Access to Data: It is easy to record, maintain, and access patient data with developing healthcare software such as HMS. So, the information is quickly accessible on different treatment cycles.

5. Cost-effectiveness: Having a robust hospital or healthcare management system can provide significant cost benefits for hospitals. It reduces administrative overhead and helps in the optimal allocation of resources.

6. Centralized Control: Administrative operations can be centralized and coordinated more effectively with such a system.

7. Error Reduction: It helps reduce the possibility of errors in medical records such as that of false positives, ineffective course therapy, etc. by facilitating up-to-date information about patients.

8. Intelligent Analytics: Hospital information management system facilitates the administration with better insights using detailed reports and analysis of various processes. They can make decisions that are backed by data and track as well as fix problems.

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What are the Different Hospital Management System Modules?

Modern hospitals deal with a humongous amount of data, and they leverage healthcare IT services to manage this data. Moreover, it lets you rethink patient care delivery with a suite of modules constituting the comprehensive HMS which gives hospitals everything they need including tools for managing patient care, streamlining operations, and improving efficiency.

1. Electronic Medical Records (EMR): It’s a unified software system that manages essential patient information like medications, health records, doctor’s notes, and more. This system is used for electronic medical records management and is tailored to the needs of a specific hospital. EMR is used interchangeably with electronic health records (EHR) that manage medical records. But the latter has a deeper and broader scope than the former.

2. Patient Information Management System: The hospital patient management system module involves managing patient-related data like registration, appointment scheduling, admission, discharge, transfer of patients, and billing. It allows a seamless flow of patient-oriented processes and offers other providers within the system a single body of information relating to a given patient.

3. Human Resource Management System: The HRMS or staff management module covers all staff matters relating to doctors, nurses, technicians, and administrative staff, among others. This comprises capabilities for staff rostering, time tracking, performance rating, training supervision, and payroll processing. It encourages the careful use of the available personnel and the compliance of labor laws.

4. Insurance Claims Management System: This system ensures that the patient’s insurance information is kept correctly, and the claims are properly processed. It determines the patient’s insurance coverage, files claims, and looks up claims. Such a module simplifies the insurance secondment process and enhances hospital revenue cycle management.

5. Immunization Tracking System: The module for immunization or vaccination serves to follow up and track patient vaccination schedules. It takes care of immunization records, sends out reminders about upcoming vaccinations, and checks whether the vaccination process complies with the established guidelines. This module generates awareness for preventative measures and keeps proper data on the vaccinations done.

6. Inventory and Procurement Management System: The supply management or IPMS module assists in supplies inventory like drugs, medical equipment, and consumables management in the hospital. It maintains inventory documents, produces purchase orders, calculates expiration dates, and handles supplier information. The module runs at full capacity to ensure that the suppliers are readily available and with no wastage.

7. Data Analytics and Reporting System: This module offers analytical tools to spot and analyze hospital data for further decision making. It has capabilities for data representation, trend analysis, and performance analysis. It performs this task by finding areas that need improvement, resources optimization, as well as enabling hospital management to take rational decisions.

8. Electronic Health Records (EHR): The EHR module is like EMR, but the range of data they can record goes beyond just medical records. It includes things such as patient demographics, progress notes, medications, vital signs, past medical history, and many more. EHRs are created to be shared not only within the same healthcare setting but also across different settings, a characteristic that provides a comprehensive view of patient’s health information.

9. Pharmaceutical Information System: The PIS module, also known as the pharmacy management system, oversees pharmacy operations, which can involve medication dispensing, drug interaction checking, inventory management, and prescription management. It serves to standardize medication processes, thus making them safe and secure in the hospital.

10. Laboratory Information Management System: The LIMS module implements and manages laboratory operations such as test ordering, sample collection, processing, and reporting results. It connects with laboratory equipment, automates workflow, and enhances the efficacy of laboratory processes.

11. Radiology Information Management System: The RIMS is comprised of managing operations for the radiology department, which include scheduling radiology tests, capturing image data, interpreting images, and reporting results. It simplifies the radiology workflow and assists in communication between radiology and other departments.

12. Appointment Scheduling System: This module is used for scheduling, rescheduling, and canceling patient appointments. It supports the rational distribution of resources and shortens patient waiting lists by streamlining the scheduling procedure.

13. Healthcare Billing and Accounting System: The billing module concerns financial reporting issues and can handle cases like invoicing, payment processing, and financial reporting. It guarantees the billing process's accuracy, makes the collections departments' operations more efficient, and enhances revenue collection.

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Features of a Hospital Management System

The features of hospital management system are what make the healthcare institutions adopt them prominently. Hospitals usually look out for the following features while building or implementing an HMS to maximize patient care quality to the maximum.

1. Billing: Billing is an important feature for HMS that reduces administrative efforts in estimating and compiling billing information.

2. Appointments: It allows patients to schedule appointments and track their progress.

3. Generating Reports: HMS provides reports and data to track performance and metrics that help in decision-making.

4. Data Security: Data security is highly important for digital medical systems to protect sensitive patient information.

5. Inpatient Registration: With all the information stored centrally, it’s easy to check the availability of beds and admit new patients.

6. Outpatient Management: Outpatient management is easy with quick registration, payment, and process.

7. Tracking Vitals: Tracking and exchanging information about patient vitals becomes easy and quick.

8. Prescription Management: This feature allows physicians to renew prescriptions or cancel previous prescriptions from a single interface.

What are the Different Types of Hospital Management Systems?

Hospital management systems are divided into several types as per their capabilities to manage various functions, workflows, or tasks. Here are some of the common types of HMS that are going places in the medical field:

1. On-Premises HMS: On-premises hospital management systems are physically installed and are managed on-site in the hospital’s facilities. They have dedicated physical hardware and need an IT team for support. Such systems empower organizations to customize and manage data as far as they want to. Nevertheless, it comes with hardware and software price tags and regular maintenance costs to iron things out.

2. Cloud-Based HMS: Cloud-based HMS are hosted on remote servers and accessed over the network. They are designed with the scalability factor in mind. Thus, the hospital can allocate resources to its requirements. Cloud-based solutions are usually more economical than their on-premises alternatives, and such re-configuring can do away with the need for on-site hardware while simultaneously reducing maintenance overheads. Security and data privacy are likely the most crucial aspects of cloud-based HMS due to their ability to store data on external servers.

3. Open-Source HMS: These solutions allow hospitals to look at the source code and make changes or customize the software to fit their narrow needs. Open-source HMS enables flexibility and cost-savings, yet it comes with the demand for technical expertise regarding the implementation and ongoing maintenance. It plays a role in the availability of community support and routine updates, which hospitals must include in their decision-making.

4. Integrated HMS: HMIS platforms combine modules like EMR, billing, scheduling, and pharmacy management to incorporate them into a unified environment. Hospitals reduce the burden on their staff by allocating these tasks to automated systems. Hence, they can streamline operations, reduce data duplication, and achieve operational efficiency—the integrated HMS results in higher interoperability than individual departments or systems with incomplete connections.

Apart from these are other types, such as specialized HMS, enterprise HMS, mobile HMS, web-based HMS, and patient engagement HMS. Each of these types has its own set of significance and consideration factors, and the choice of the ideal one varies per hospital size, budget, infrastructure, etc.

How Much Does a Hospital Management System Cost?

Typically, the cost to develop a healthcare management system range from $50,000 to $150,000. However, it can vary due to various factors like complexity, functionality, third-party integrations, and more. Further, there are different types of hospital software and each of them comes with various features. So, the cost of hospital management system development also depends on which type of software you choose for your organization.

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To Wrap UpHospitals and other medical centers are taking advantage of technological advancements to streamline their processes and offer better patient care. They get better control over their operations with the use of custom-built healthcare software solutions for their institution. The software helps hospitals make decisions faster and automate operations.Being a leading hospital management software development company, we can help you develop a secure and scalable online hospital management system for your organization with cutting-edge features. We are experienced and understand the nuances of the healthcare industry. You can rely on us to build the best HMS that meets industry standards and compliances. Contact us to book a free consultation to help you find the best opportunity.