Improve Patient Outcomes with Healthcare Management Systems

Healthcare management systems encompass a wide range of digital tools and software, including electronic medical records (EMRs) and those that indirectly affect healthcare, like data analytics and billing. This article explores the benefits of healthcare management systems and how they can impact patient outcomes, enhance communication and coordination among healthcare teams and patients, enable personalized treatment plans, and streamline billing processes to ease patient headaches associated with medical payments.

The Impact on Patient Outcomes

Above all else, healthcare is about the patient. Let’s review the direct and indirect impact of healthcare management systems on patient outcomes.

Direct Influence

When you enter a doctor’s office or a hospital bed, think about all the technology that you see around you. Most of it is managed by healthcare management systems. The most commonly recognized healthcare management system is that for EMRs, but there are also EKG machines and blood pressure monitors.

These devices have storage and management systems for providers to review collected health information and make decisions about the next steps of a patient’s health. It is rare for a patient to have the clinical event immediately in front of a provider, so the tools in management systems are required to appropriately collect information and tell providers what’s going on as soon as possible.

Research has shown that healthcare management systems directly impact decision-making for patient care. Quick access to accurate patient information enables healthcare providers, such as family medicine physicians, to make more informed decisions and diagnoses. This, in turn, can lead to faster and more effective treatment, improving patient outcomes through deliberate care and reducing the risk of medical errors by more expediently informing multidisciplinary teams.

Indirect Influence

Indirect influences on patient outcomes are those that do not directly impact clinical decision-making but still affect patient outcomes. Nevertheless, much goes into getting a patient to the point where a clinical decision can be made, and healthcare management systems contribute significantly to this process.

For example, appointment reminders built into management systems can significantly reduce no-show rates, ensuring that patients can access the most relevant personalized medical advice. Moreover, a healthcare management system can alert providers to possible errors, such as medication dispensing mishaps, as the system knows when an abnormal activity is taking place. These systems may help reduce the more than 100,000 FDA-reported suspected medication errors annually.

Enhanced Communication and Coordination

Healthcare management systems excel at facilitating communication and coordination among healthcare teams and between providers and patients. Real-time collaboration and data sharing enable healthcare professionals to make well-informed decisions quickly and adjust treatment plans if sudden changes in a patient’s clinical status occur.

With healthcare becoming more consumer oriented, patients can be a greater participant in their medical care. For example, a healthcare management system was designed to more rapidly enable patients to self-triage and self-schedule appointments during the COVID-19 pandemic, preventing unnecessary visits when resources were scarce.

Personalized Treatment Plans

Healthcare management systems enable the creation of personalized treatment plans, as they can store and analyze large amounts of data to delineate individual-level nuances. Data analytic tools are commonly incorporated into these systems to expedite discoveries and alleviate the burden of healthcare statisticians and researchers who have infinite questions and topics to explore.

For example, Casewatch Millennium is a customizable social services case management system that has been used to monitor trends in factors associated with HIV infections in Los Angeles county. This has enabled the county to better customize its plan of action for improving HIV infection rates. However, this ability to customize a healthcare solution is dependent on having specific knowledge about the needs of a patient or community, and that cannot be identified at a large scale without a robust healthcare management system.

Billing Systems and Data Analytics Collections

Healthcare management systems streamline the billing process and communication between providers and payers. The global medical billing outsourcing market is estimated to be over 12 billion USD, highlighting the need for systems capable of handling prior authorizations, medical claims, inventory use, and bad debts. These aspects of the healthcare experience often detract from positive patient experiences when they are not handled in a streamlined manner.

Significant insights into how a healthcare entity operates from a macro perspective can be elicited from the data collected on revenue cycle management and medical coding, impacting organizational viability and patient access to care. As a result, healthcare management systems are playing an ever-increasing role in the financial and billing aspects of healthcare and influence both the patient and provider experience.

Challenges and Considerations

Adopting and implementing healthcare management systems come with challenges. First, the upfront costs associated with installing, implementing, securing, and educating patients and providers about utilizing a healthcare management system can be formidable.

Second, training providers and patients who may not be the most technologically savvy can pose notable risks, as people prefer simple user experiences when trying new systems. Healthcare providers are often unforgiving regarding poor or insufficient user experiences, as their time is valuably devoted to their patients.

Finally, decision-makers need to consider how a healthcare management system interacts or interoperates with other existing technology and how to think about data standardization if they want to leverage the technology and information to improve patient outcomes and provider productivity.

Conclusion

Healthcare management systems are already beginning to positively affect patient care and processes within healthcare operations by enhancing communication, enabling personalized treatment plans, and improving billing efficiency. However, it's crucial to be mindful of the fact that more work needs to be done to resolve commonly encountered problems associated with using healthcare management systems, such as analyzing collected data, securitizing information, and creating an efficient and easy user experience. It is already challenging enough for organizations to keep up with their healthcare and patient demands. Consequently, healthcare professionals and entities should consider collaborating with those experienced with technology to enhance their systems.

Organizations like OtterSoft offer a platform for collaboration and intelligence sharing in a future where healthcare management systems provide patients and providers with more efficiency, productivity, and better health.

Here at OtterSoft, we help healthcare technology providers drive innovation and integrate systems to seamlessly enable healthcare organizations to identify areas for improvement and implement changes to enhance patient experiences continually. See how we can help you overcome healthcare innovation challenges by strategically partnering with a development team.