How Healthcare Businesses Can Optimize Their Patient Intake And Billing Using Custom Software?
One of the
most significant challenges of the healthcare industry is managing patient
intake and billing. Each year hospitals and care facilities spend thousands of
dollars on solutions, employees, and third parties to manage what is often
defined as an overwhelming task. However, businesses in the healthcare industry
shouldnt overlook the potential of custom software.
In this
article, well examine how using custom software can optimize patient intake
and billing amongst other processes in the healthcare industry.
What Should a Healthcare Management Software Do?
The goal
of a healthcare management software should be to have a set of services that
are part of a unified system that connects all departments. However, because
every healthcare facility is different, their needs will also differ. Not to
mention that some facilities may be larger than others and so the emphasis of
the software will vary, which in this case (for this article) is patient intake
and billing.
While
there are many so-called out of the box solutions for healthcare facilities,
deploying them is a waste of time and money because they are generalized
software. Much of the software may have nothing to do with your facility and
cant be personalized. However, customized software will be custom-tailored to
meet the needs of the healthcare facility, which has its own set of benefits.
Custom
software for a healthcare business will address the following needs:
·
It
will be easy to use, so existing employees will not need extensive training.
·
Streamline
and automate processes that makes them more efficient.
·
Be
tailored to the type of healthcare facility and its existing infrastructure.
How Can Custom Software Optimize Patient Intake and Billing?
The most
important thing to keep in mind is that both patient intake and billing are
paper-heavy processes in most healthcare facilities. So, if a lot of the
repetitive paper-related tasks can be done away with, it reduces errors and
improves efficiency exponentially.
Optimizing Patient Intake
·
Custom
software can optimize patient intake by making it wholly electronic. Electronic
forms can allow people to enter their information via a tablet computer, smart
phone, etc. however, the software can also have the capability of scanning and
evaluating handwritten or typed forms filled out by patients, guardians, family
members etc.
·
The
software can then save the required data into a database automatically, without
the need for a clerk who enters the data manually. Not only will it speed up
the patient intake process, but a human being can be on standby to help the
computer make sense of documents that arent clear.
Optimizing Billing
·
One
of how healthcare billing can be optimized is with Intelligent Data Extraction.
The custom billing software can distinguish between bills, invoices, checks,
etc.
·
The
customized billing system can also be designed so that items that require
approval are moved through the chain of hierarchy. For instance, outgoing
checks will first be approved by the finance manager, and later by the
facilitys director. Defining a custom approval process can only be achieved
using custom software.
Conclusion
All health
care businesses are different and so custom software is the only way to address
each businesss needs. That said above is only a minor instance of what can be
achieved. On average, a healthcare business will be looking at a 400% increase
in efficiency and at least an 80% decline in costs by just switching to bpm custom
software.