The use of technology is revolutionizing the healthcare industry. Not all may realize its importance now, but there has been accelerated development and evidence about the impact of health information technology on patient care.
It’s no surprise that more and more healthcare centers are adopting the latest technology and taking steps to transform the way they operate.
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However, there are many categories of the health information system, and most of them share similar capabilities. So how do you differentiate them and decide which one is best suited for your business? Healthcare information technology can provide a seamless experience for all patients as well as practitioners. You can find this technology being used in urgent care near me facilities as well.
To help you, we will talk about the eight different types of healthcare information systems. But before that, let’s first understand the underlying meaning of health information technology.
What is Health Information Technology?
Health information technology, or HIT, refers to a system designed to store, share, and analyze the data collected in any healthcare facility. It could be private as well as public clinics, hospitals, and doctor’s private chambers. It also collects, organizes, and manages patients’ electronic medical records.
The use of healthcare software can help improve the quality of patient treatment and personalise health product recommendations. There are different types of healthcare information systems that take care of administerial aspects and patients’ medical data, amongst many other things.
Clearly, a healthcare system has a lot of benefits to offer by increasing the effectiveness of a healthcare institute. For instance, it ensures the accuracy of data collected and thus reduces any chance of medical error.
Not only that, but it saves time and effort, which is spent daily on managerial tasks by streamlining operations. Thus, organizations can focus more on patient treatment and follow-up. Other than that, you get faster prescriptions and reduces paperwork as well.
These were just a few of the examples of how healthcare systems are transforming the patient care industry. You can choose the type of healthcare information systems required depending on your organization’s model and specific needs. Let’s discuss them in detail.
Different Types of Healthcare Information System
1. Medical Practice Management System
The medical practice management system forms an integral part of the healthcare system. It takes care of different administrative and clinical aspects of your practice.
It is geared towards a facility’s clerical work, such as managing various documents, scheduling appointments, and more. It automates and streamlines multiple activities, which makes it easy to run the facility smoothly.
Medical practice management software generally doesn’t include patients’ medical data. However, it does take care of insurance claims. It automatically processes claims, handles billing and payments, and also generates reports.
Regardless of the size, all healthcare providers — from a single doctor practitioner care to a large hospital — can make use of medical management software.
To list out some of its benefits:
- By automating routine clerical tasks, it allows you to concentrate more on the quality of patient care.
- It gives you easy access to healthcare data. You can view all the documents online.
One example of practice management software is eClinicalWorks.
2. Electronic Health Records (EHR)
Electronic health records is another type of hospital management information system that is basically concerned about the patient’s medical information.
Earlier, doctors or nurses had to document every medical detail of their patients on paper. But now, they can simply fill out all the information on the EHR system. The best part is that it can be accessed instantly using a mobile or computer. It also enables doctors to easily share data across different departments, allowing them to provide quick and accurate treatment.
It deals with data management, which generally contains information on patients’ medical history, allergies, laboratory charges, and more.
Some of the benefits of implementing EHR include:
- It increases efficiency by eliminating paperwork and giving immediate access to patients’ data.
- It improves the quality of patient care as the same information is shared across all departments, avoiding any medical errors.
Some of the types of electronic health records are CureMD, Care360, etc.
3. E-Prescribing Software
E-prescribing software is a beneficial technology as it enables doctors to generate prescriptions electronically.
It allows them to directly send prescriptions to the pharmacy in just a few clicks, and when the patient gets there, the store is already ready with their supplements. The system eliminates the need to create handwritten notes, which are generally hard-to-decipher and instead generate an understandable prescription.
Plus, there is no prescription mix up — pharmacist ensures patient safety by giving them the correct one. It also eliminates the chances of misplacing a prescription.
The advantages of using e-prescribing software are:
- It allows medical providers to send prescriptions directly to pharmacies, without the risk of getting misplaced.
- It gives quick and easy access to a patient’s medication history with the help of a pharmacy’s database.
One of the best examples of e-prescribing software is DrFirst.
4. Remote Patient Monitoring
Remote patient monitoring systems, or RPMs, is gaining popularity in recent times, and all for the right reasons.
With the help of RPM, medical sensors can read our body functions and send data from anywhere to healthcare professionals at the facility. The data enables doctors to predict and prevent any event that otherwise may have caused serious issues.
The RPM is reducing the overall cost that comes with hospital readmission. It is leading to better quality health care. And as a larger picture, the data being collected can be used to study bigger population health down the road.
This data can then be used to make recommendations on health conditions.
Let’s look at the benefits of using remote patient monitoring:
- It is reducing the cost of chronic disease and assists in post-discharge care as well.
- It can help monitor a patient’s glucose level or blood pressure from anywhere across the world. Thus, it results in improved patient care.
One such example of a remote patient monitoring system is Medtronic.
5. Master Patient Index (MPI)
Master patient index is a crucial part of the hospital management system as it aims at connecting patient records from more than one database.
It is generally used by hospitals or large clinics whereby they enter data regarding their patients. Once stored, it can be used for future references by any institute sharing the database. This MPI creates an index of all medical records for a specific patient, which is easily accessible by all departments.
The main purpose of MPI is to reduce duplication of patient records and also to avoid inaccuracy of information that can result in wrong treatment.
6. Patient Portal
Another essential type of hospital management system is the patient portal.
Patient portals provide a platform where patients can access their health-related data using any device. It includes all the information stored in an EHR, such as patients’ medical history, treatments, and other medications previously taken.
Not only that, but patient portals also allow users to schedule appointments, view bills, and make payments online. They can use their personal devices, including smartphones, tablets, or computer to access it.
In fact, some of the patient portals even facilitate patients to have a conversation with healthcare professionals. So instead of having to wait in line for hours to schedule an appointment, a patient can now simply log in, check their doctor’s availability and also, have a look at their lab reports.
One good example is MedFusion.
7. Urgent Care Applications
Urgent care application is a type of health management information system that keeps track of patients that might require immediate attention.
It enables patients to skip the waiting room and get the care instantly. Besides, it provides patients with knowledge about health-related queries, informative health articles, and even let them track their medical care status.
Some of the benefits of implementing urgent care applications are:
- It increases patients’ satisfaction rate as urgent care app provides quick service to them.
- Urgent care apps provide medical help 24/7 hours a day.
One good example of an urgent care app is HealthTap.
8. Medical Billing Software
The most integral type of health management system is the medical billing solution.
It is one of the most time-consuming processes, and yet one of the critical ones. Healthcare facilities are always running busy, and they have little time to spare for managerial tasks. Billing software makes it easy by automatically generating medical bills and handling the entire workflow.
Besides patient billing, the software also takes care of insurance claims and verification, payment tracking, and processing. It sends out alerts for late payments or if there is any pending bill from the hospital’s end.
Conclusion
The healthcare information system is the future of healthcare centers. Despite that, many hospitals are skeptical about adopting this new technology. This is because of two reasons — its high cost and implementation process.
Once you decide to implement, an institute may undergo a drastic change. The initial process may seem complicated, but we guarantee that the outcomes will be worth every effort.
To conclude, we hope that this article will help you narrow down your search on different types of healthcare management information system.
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