Billing software is one of the essential software used in the healthcare industry. It is also called the medical practitioner's lifeline. Therefore, you must choose the right hospital billing software that offers a fantastic reporting system to manage the cash flow as well as the payment time speed.

The new hospital billing software helps to manage both insurance needs as well as patient payment reliably which is not included in other software.

Uses of Hospital Billing Software in HMS:

Each part of the Hospital Management System is integrated and automated effortlessly, and it also provides the opportunity to move forth and back from different data and reports.

There is no loss of bills and data.
Secure and safe reporting system.
There is a financial dashboard that tracks the practice's health efficiently.

The web-based practice management is used for managing and collecting the bill from any place efficiently, you can use and maintain this software in every area where it suits you best.

Automated Data backup is enabled.
You can view your daily schedule from anywhere.

You can easily understand the financial practice health of the practitioners, and the report makes it easy and efficient. The user features are used for deciding the right information to share.

The software offers Enabled visualizations in the form of figures and graphs.
You can track revenue, payer performance, and related ones.
You can easily customize and display them in the Excel format.
The software can deliver a report on a daily or monthly basis as per the requirements.

What are the Types of Billing in HMS?

Various departments use billing in the Hospital Management system to improve the billing facilities in the hospitals. Some of them include

Registration and Consulting Billing
Pharmacy Billing
Laboratory Billing
In-Patient Billing

Registration and consulting Billing:

Hospital billing software prebooks appointments for the patients they provided in advance for both follow-up patients as well as new patients.
Hospital billing software generates bills for the certified lab and radiology services.

Pharmacy Billing:

Our pharmacy billing software deals with providing the retail sales of medical supervision to OPD patients, and customers and also helps with the issue of medicines to the hospital inpatients. Our pharmacy billing software has the following features.

Able to offer an extensive collection of available drugs for clinicians.
Able to sort out the alternative drugs for the drugs that are not available.
The software aids in interfacing with a database of drugs.
Our software pops up the drug allergy alerts easily.
The billing software interfaced for dispatch along with the pneumatic tube.

Laboratory Billing Software:

The laboratory billing software helps to disseminate and record the information of the different performed tests. Here are some of the salient features of our laboratory billing software.

Test setup and do the services.
Excels different tests and diagnostic packages.
Offers the resulting process from the sample collection process, recheck process, and fetch from analyzer data.
The software does the recheck with the Sample Collections.
Our billing software offers the status update of the labs after a clear analysis.
The software works as per the NABL standards.
The software comes with a dashboard for TAT, authorization, progress works, tests, and parameters.

In-patient Billing Software:

The software takes care of the patients who are allocated in the ward bed after registration, and this deals with complete services and treatment offered to the patients while they stay in the hospital.

The features of our in-patient billing software include:

The software is capable of taking place the conversion from OP to IP.
The software takes care of the patients by allocating the beds, offers consultation for intern departments, tracks patients in the hospitals, and deals with bed transfers.
The software maintains the patient billing sheets.
The software comes with a dashboard for discharge summaries, patient access, billing audits, activities, and much more.

Track Profit and Loss Statements Easily:

The Hospital Management system products come with tally integrations, and therefore you can easily track and manage the expenses. The billing software in the Hospital Management system also monitors both the profit and loss statements so that you can quickly identify what lags in your Hospital information management.

Request for HMS/LIMS free demo

When searching for software, almost everyone looks for free ones. If you simply type in the name of any random software, you’ll probably see a google autocomplete suggestion “free download”. In some cases, it does make a lot of sense in using free software. Why pay for something when you can get it for free?

Searches for downloading free EMR software have increased with government legislation mandating their use in hospitals. Let us look into why this is a bad idea.

If you’re not paying for it, you’re the product

As a general rule, nobody ever gives you something for free. As economists would say, “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product”. In the case of most free software, this is the case. Recently it was found that most of the free antivirus apps in the Google Play store actually did nothing. Their purpose? Probably to collect data from your device. This may not affect an average person very much, but if you’re concerned about privacy, you should probably stay away from these software. And when you’re dealing with a hospital management software, this is a key aspect. Data security is a very important aspect especially when you handle patient data. A data leak, however small has the potential to damage the reputation of your hospital.

Lack of accountability

A hospital management system has to have certain qualifications that assure you that a particular software can fit your needs. When you purchase a software, it is possible for you to verify if these software fit the criteria. But when you download a software for free, there is no way for you to be sure if these software fit the criteria. And since there is no monetary transaction between you and the software provider, it will be difficult to hold them accountable.

The lack of accountability will be an issue if the software faces any glitches. If the software crashes, customer support is not provided for the system, and you will be on your own. A software glitch in a free android app may be annoying, and will not cause any huge problems even if is not resolved. In case of a hospital, the software handles sensitive patient information and a software glitch can compromise this data, and with no tech support from the providers, it can cause a lot of problems.

Upgrades? Nope

As government regulations change, and as the technology improves, you may face the need for a better software. If you’re relying on a free software for very important tasks, such as managing your hospital, you may find yourself stuck with an old software. Free software rarely provide any upgrades for long durations. And when you want an upgrade, you may find yourself searching for a new software, and you’ll have to import the existing data into the new software which will require additional resources.

The story of the open source software

A commonly trusted free software are the open source software. Ubuntu is an example of an open source software. They are usually made by developers across the world, and their source code is available for free, and you’re free to change or modify the code as you wish. Since the source code is available for everyone, it is unlikely that the software can have malicious intents. And as long as the developers continue to improve the software, it will remain up to date with the required features. Open source software appears to offer a very good deal, and they do, in the case of most of the software. But in the case of a hospital management system, it is never a good idea to use an open source software. This is because of a combination of reasons discussed above. First of all, there are no hospital management software with the kind of community that a software like Ubuntu has. If you face any issues, you’re on your own. In the case of popular softwares, there may be forums in which users can discuss issues, and they may get resolved. But for a hospital management software, there are no such forums, and when you’re managing a hospital, you cannot afford to wait for a solution that may never come. And as we discussed, updates will be available for open source software only as long as the developers are working on the project.

What about the free trials?

If you have been looking for free HMS downloads, you may have come across many SaaS healthcare software companies offering lite or trial versions of their software for free, or maybe the complete version of their software, but for a limited time period. These software are generally secure and will be much more robust than software from other software providers. They may even offer regular updates. But remember that these trial versions are just for that. They will be severely limited in their capabilities, and you will definitely have to upgrade at some point. And the providers may not provide tech support if you’re using the free version. But they do provide an easy way to evaluate a software and if available, they serve as a demo for the complete version.

Lack of customization

Generally across hospitals, or even across departments, there is no uniform workflow. Each department head has their own workflows, and this is the reason why hospital management systems are highly customized. However such customization is not at all possible in a hospital management system, and if implemented, could affect the functioning of the hospital and may prove to be counterproductive.

To know more about hospital management software, visit MocDoc Hospital Information System.

Why you should never download ...

When searching for software, almost everyone looks.....

Hospital Management System has been used for decades. Most of the hospitals in India use HMS, but they face particular challenges in implementing it. Among them, technical and human challenges are the complicated factors while implementing HMS.

How can you face the challenges while implementing HMS?

The HMS system helps to manage every piece of information about the patients, like their personal data, comprehensive medical data, and previous medical histories, along with their diagnoses, treatments, investigations, and other medical decisions. Apart from that, HMS helps improve safety and quality and is one of the most affordable options available in the healthcare industry.

Despite their benefits, the healthcare industry faces many challenges. Implementation of HMS still fails in some hospitals due to barriers.

A few Challenging problems that you face while implementing HMS

Human Challenges

While considering human factors include

Awareness of HMS's advantages & importance.
In general, Experience and knowledge of using computer applications.
Impressions and Beliefs regarding HMS and making use of them efficiently.

The researchers in a study have identified three main human challenges that are a barrier to adopting the HMS in healthcare industries.

There is a shortage of professional healthcare faculty with in-depth knowledge of HMS and other similar technologies.
Poor acceptance of HMS Software.
Lack of health informatics professionals capable of establishing and implementing the techniques.

Another few significant problems for unsuccessful HMS implementation include.

Healthcare specialists nature,
the lack of time allowed for training and learning on making use of the HMS,
the lack of healthcare professional support, motivation, and more.

Many studies illustrate that HMS requires more effort, time, and work. There are high chance of HMS slowing down and causing a decrease in productivity.

Technical Challenges:

Other technical challenges that fail the implementation of HMS in the healthcare industry include:

Networks and computers have different maintenance problems.
Lack of standards for Data entry and retrieval.
Difficulties in training users technically to use HMS.

A few tips to overcome Human Challenges

Proceed below to check out a few things you can follow to overcome the human challenges that make HMS implementation tough.

All Medical education programs should include the significance of Hospital management system, its applications, and its advantages. One can improve the awareness of the advantages and benefits of using the HMS with a focused multi-phase approach on any topic. The system can be used from the starting level of healthcare industry schools, and colleges, then with the undergraduate degree, and through various aspects of postgraduate medical education.

Formal training while taking various levels of medical practice and education can improve the knowledge in using a Hospital management system correctly. Many types of research suggest HMS training and teaching needs to be developed and implemented as a subject or course of the postgraduate and undergraduate medical education programs.

Every health information management should include subjects of HMS short courses for medical education programs and healthcare professionals. These programs should be initiated by the health ministry and its formal channels for every healthcare specialist at any healthcare organization and hospital. Apart from that, developing and enhancing self-taught computer science courses in nursing education, medical schools, and postgraduate training is also essential.

It's a good idea to develop both postgraduate and undergraduate specialized programs in Health Information Management, Health Informatics, and Health Information Technology, which increases the number of health informatics specialists and technicians.

Overcoming the negative impressions of HMS's new and experienced staff can be neglected by developing HMS training programs and in-house hospital orientation programs.

You can make the healthcare professional participate and be involved in various stages of system implementation, development, and deployment to improve the healthcare specialists' support.

You can offer the healthcare professional overtime payment, direct and indirect incentives, rewards, bonuses, and more for the hospital departments and sections that implement HMS successfully in a healthcare organization.

Offering healthcare professionals enough time is convenient and suitable for them to learn and train on HMS.

Another good idea is to conduct different exciting training programs for healthcare professionals so that they know about HMS implementation in depth and gain a better understanding.

Here are a few tips to overcome the Technical Challenges

You need to ensure that the HMS commercial providers and vendors are offering the proper user manuals, documentation, troubleshooting, and guidelines for using HMS to the hospitals properly.

Ensuring the working conditions of computers and networks is critical for the software to work better and have fewer maintenance problems. Technical support and hardware maintenance are also significant.

You are upgrading your old communication networks and computers to new ones for enhanced performance.

Make sure you perform every analysis required in depth before the start of the design phase and the implementation phase.

Implementing newer innovations in both hardware and software is required to overcome data entry difficulties.

While considering the software innovations, the system needs to be designed to support structured data entry instead of unstructured one. In the case of hardware innovations, implementing hand-held devices, touch screens, and tablet PCs helps minimize the gap between the recording and data acquisition process and leads to easier accessibility.

Eliminating health information technology and management staff overload can be done by outsourcing a few electronic processing tasks, namely medical transcription of dictating the voice files.

Make sure about the system interface design, and check whether they are understandable and user-friendly.

Data standards usage is one of the crucial steps for source accuracy, quality, reliability, and validation of system data.

Make sure you increase the computer terminal numbers at the point of care.

The above tips will help you eliminate all challenges while implementing your Hospital information management system. Any queries or other information regarding the topics are welcome in the comments section.

Challenges while implementing ...

Hospital Management System has been use.....

Hospitals are rarely a single department entity. They usually span multiple specialties focusing on different treatment areas, such as pediatrics, neurosciences, gynecology, etc.

There are also various departments taking care of the day-to-day running of the hospital, such as maintenance, accounting, billing, operation theatre, and management. Each of these departments consists of many people carrying out various tasks, ranging in complexity from brain surgeries to fixing overhead lamps.

A single organization may have hospitals across multiple locations, making it difficult to manage them all. A hospital management system helps you manage the enormous complexities of efficiently managing the hospital sustainably.

Even though hospitals span several different areas, in the beginning, it usually involves only a few departments and just the primary number of people required to manage them all.

In such a case, a simple management system with the capacity to deal with relatively less data would work. But as a hospital starts growing, incorporating more specialties and treatment facilities, this system may not be able to deal with the massive flow of data.

A hospital management system could make this process much faster and easier.

As the number of departments and employees grows, the management system would also extend to accommodate the conditions created by the growth, thus aiding the development of the hospital instead of being a hindrance.

Scale up - The role of a cloud-based system

A cloud-based online system has many advantages compared to an offline system regarding scaling up. Instead of making changes in all systems in a hospital network, the differences would have to be made only by the software providers. They could easily be updated to add more departments and employees without reinstalling the updated version in all the systems in a hospital. And since the software and its interface remain the same, there is no need to allocate extra resources to train the users.

A cloud-based system would also be much more efficient in the case of hospitals in multiple locations. The data generated from all the hospitals run by the same organization could be integrated and analyzed to improve overall performance. As new sites come up, the software is updated, and the existing management network can seamlessly integrate without additional training.

This option would allow for better purchase decisions, as requirements for the entire chain of hospitals could be understood and remedied in bulk, thus helping make much better business transactions and improving efficiency for the whole network.

Resource management and reduction of wastage :

A sound hospital management system would also help prevent unwanted waste of resources. Efficient management of the various equipment and disposables inventory would cut short the resources otherwise wasted. In scaling up, there is usually an increased wastage of resources due to purchasing excess materials to prevent a shortage. With an efficient system, such wastages could easily be detected and avoided. This option could provide a smooth scale-up from a small hospital to an extensive network without excessive spending.

Scaling up - Understanding the data generated :

A common problem associated with the scaling up of any system is the overwhelming amount of data generated from the various subsystems. Every bit of data has to be analyzed and compiled in a manner that is easy to understand to make correct decisions at every corner. A scale-up could be a headache for a hospital with a large amount of data generated without an adequate system to manage the data.

An efficient hospital management system would make this entire process a cakewalk by managing the data generated in real time smoothly and quickly. In a sound hospital management system, all the data from the various departments regarding all the matters from procurement of materials, human resources, and energy requirements to billing, accounting, and inventory management is compiled and represented in a meaningful manner.

This leads to a quicker and easier decision-making process and, therefore, a more accessible, smoother, and efficient scale-up.

Management of the extra human resources required for scale-up :

The efficient running of a hospital requires that all the stakeholders play their roles, and to enable this; they should be able to manage their work quickly and intuitively. A sound hospital management system allows smooth work delegation and easy access to the information required for the task.

For example, it should allow a doctor to enter information regarding a patient and their treatment regime and enable the pharmacist to track the inventory quickly. With an efficient system, it would also be able to evaluate the work done by them. Such easy management of the entire workforce, without causing any hindrance to them, but help them with this, would enable the hospital to grow.

In short, a sound hospital management system would make it easier to scale up the hospital network by efficiently managing the resources, avoiding waste, creating an efficient workforce, and better data management. Such a system could provide hassle-free patient care, making everyone’s work much more manageable.

Scalable Hospital Management S...

Hospitals are rarely a single department ent.....

One of the first things that come into our mind before we decide to purchase something, is the cost. Whether it be a Netflix subscription or a new bike, or a business-related purchase, the price plays an important role. While acquiring Hospital Management Software also, pricing is an important factor to be considered. Hospital management software being much more complex than a movie ticket or an automobile, the costs that are involved in it are also a bit more complicated. We have previously discussed the various advantages of using hospital management software. Here let’s break down the costs involved in implementing it.

How the price is determined - The Number of Beds

Cost of a hospital management system mainly depends on the number of beds in the hospital. As a rule of thumb, we can say that the price goes up as the number of beds increase.

So generally as a hospital grows and develops, a need for a system with higher capacity comes up. This in gives you two options; either get high capacity, a non-upgradable system or get a system with the capacity you require, but which can be upgraded for better features. The latter is preferable, as in the former you end up paying for features you may not require currently.

Online or Offline System

Whether the system is online or offline brings up different kinds of expenditures.

Generally for an offline software, the firm that provides the system will simply install the software for a one time fee. The hospital will have to acquire servers by itself and manage its own data, install the cables, network its systems, and generally, have to deal much more into the hardware aspect than online software. In such cases, extra costs other than the cost of the software itself will come up. Also, a dedicated team for managing the system will be required for general maintenance.

Online systems generally simplify these functions, as the firm providing the system will be dealing with software aspect, as well as most of the hardware aspects(such as servers, etc. Computer systems and other hardware will have to be purchased by the hospital as required). In this case, the system exists like a subscription service, where for an annual or monthly fee, the firm providing the system will maintain and manage the servers and the system. There’s much less hardware to be acquired from other sources. A simple PC connected to the internet can easily access the system. The human resources required from the hospital for maintaining the system is much less.

So in general Online Systems are more cost-effective, especially in the long run.

Implementation Cost

Implementation cost is another aspect to be considered while implementing a hospital management system. If an existing software has to be replaced by new software, the data from the old system will have to be imported into the new system. The cost involved in this, as mentioned above, will depend on the amount of data, calculated as number of beds. If the hospital has been storing all the information in paper format, resources may be needed to enter this data to the system. Implementation costs also involve setting up access for various doctors and departments.

The implementation also requires providing training for various employees, which will be different for different departments. It is important to ensure that the training is included in the implementation cost while choosing the system.

Other Factors

A good hospital management system would offer all the features that are generally required. The software can differ in their level of sophistication, from simple accounting software to software that provides updates patients using an app or SMS. The price can vary according to the level of sophistication. Most software firms offering hospital management software are willing to provide additional features, but this usually comes at an additional price, depending on the resources required

Simple software is easily available for a lower cost, but as the functionalities required increases, the price also naturally increases.

Another factor that may bring up extra cost is the technical support provided by the companies. All though most online systems get support throughout the subscription period, in the case of offline systems, enquiries have to be made to know if the additional cost may be incurred for support.

As mentioned in previous blogs, the possibility of upgrades has to be considered. Online systems cost less for upgrades, as the hospital expands, and for better features. Considering this, online systems may turn out to be cost-effective in the long run.

Overall, the costs involved could be divided into implementation costs and maintenance cost, both of which are dependant on the number of beds. For an offline software, an annual or monthly software subscription fee have to be considered, which may or may not cover the implementation and maintenance cost.

The economic benefits of getting an offline software and investing on servers and hardware and that of getting an online software and paying an annual subscription fee have to be compared, which could differ for different hospitals. The Hospital Management Software being a long term investment, saving up by getting a software with fewer features, may cost you a lot more with frequent expensive upgrades required as the hospital grows. Additional costs that may arise in the form of support, server maintenance, extra features, possible upgrades have to be looked into while making a decision.

The Hospital Management Software being a long term investment, saving up by getting the software with fewer features may cost you a lot more with frequent expensive upgrades required as the hospital grows.

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Published By Sanjana

Category HMS