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Have you been looking for ways to streamline your healthcare business’s processes? In many cases, efficiency can play a direct role in the success of a business; as such, keeping this in mind is highly important to ensure that your business is running to the best of its ability. Nevertheless, this is something that our experts here at Alpharize understand better than most, which is why we have gone out of our way today to outline some of the main healthcare technology options that could help streamline your healthcare business.
Why is it Important to Streamline My Healthcare Business?
Numerous reasons why streamlining your healthcare business is important, and keeping these in mind could help ensure that your brand has optimal opportunities overall.
Indeed, in today’s fast-paced business world, healthcare brands are facing more pressure for their services than ever; many businesses are struggling to keep up with demand, all the while patients experience significant delays, expensive services, and the like. As such, taking steps to overcome this challenge is vital.
Numerous key reasons streamlining your healthcare business can help (both for your brand and its customers). Some of the key benefits of enhancing efficiency in your healthcare business include the following points.
Combatting Patient Dissatisfaction
The level of satisfaction with healthcare services in the UK is at an all-time low, with patients expressing an overall NHS satisfaction level of just 29%. Moreover, though not as low as the NHS, dental care still has plenty of room for improvement; only around 68% of patients were very satisfied with their services in 2018, representing almost one-third of patients who are not happy. In line with this thought, there’s plenty of room for private healthcare businesses to enhance their efficiency to enhance customer support and provide a more reliable and valuable healthcare business, thereby enhancing patient satisfaction and reducing frustrations.
Reducing Operating Costs
Running a healthcare business is incredibly expensive. As a result, taking steps to reduce costs and improve your business’s margins is hugely important, and investing in healthcare technology could provide a valuable option in the long run. By implementing valuable healthcare technology and automating some of your business processes, you can potentially save a significant amount of time and money, which can ultimately lead to higher profits.
Minimizing Errors and Mistakes
Unfortunately, errors and mistakes can have a massive impact on healthcare businesses, simultaneously costing the brand while damaging its customer relationship. Fortunately, when you streamline your healthcare business with technology, you can potentially reduce the number and severity of errors, all the while improving communication and enhancing the quality of care provided to patients as a result.
Enhancing Business Reputation
With all of the aforementioned benefits in mind, it’s relatively easy to see how implementing healthcare technology could improve your business. In turn, this can support your brand’s reputation and offer new opportunities to grow your firm, attracting new customers who may be dissatisfied with the current level of their healthcare services. Naturally, this can also make your healthcare business more competitive, making a significant difference to your customer base and potential income.
Reduce Pressure on Staff
Your staff plays a crucial role in supporting your business and helping keep the brand operating at its peak efficiency. However, this can potentially take a significant toll on your teams; statistics suggest that around 70% of doctors have experienced significant mental health challenges and stress in their work, which can impact patient care significantly.
The same is also found in many other healthcare businesses; for example, over half of dentists have experienced severe workplace stress, and almost 80% of pharmacy workers have experienced mental health struggles due to the high pressure of their role.
As a result, taking steps to reduce pressure on your staff is vital. Fortunately, investing in high-quality healthcare technology can make a vast difference in this regard. Not only does this help look after your staff better, but it can also help improve the quality of service being provided to your patients - thus making this a multifaceted benefit to keep in mind.
6 Simple Ways to Implement Healthcare Technology to Streamline Your Business
Thus far, we’ve been looking at some of the main benefits of investing in healthcare technology to streamline your operations. However, it’s still not necessarily clear which options you should consider investing in to help streamline your healthcare business. Fortunately, there are numerous excellent options on the market, and keeping these in mind could help you find the ideal opportunities to take your business to the next level.
#1 Online Booking Systems
One of the most obvious types of healthcare technology that your brand could consider investing in is an online booking system. Indeed, online booking systems are increasingly being implemented in a wide range of different applications, and this can help make them highly versatile and practical for your business to consider.
The benefits of online booking systems are numerous, and this is highly important to keep in mind when determining which healthcare technology you might need. And, since online booking systems are relatively simple systems, you won’t need to worry about spending huge amounts of time training your existing team members to use the software; generally, this should come relatively easily, especially when you invest in a high-quality online booking system with an intuitive and easy to use UI.
Reduced Pressure on Receptionists
One of the main benefits of online booking systems is the reduced pressure these systems place on receptionists compared to manual bookings. Indeed, not only can these systems significantly decrease the amount of time that reception staff spend booking appointments, but they also provide customers with a more convenient way to book consultations and appointments from home. In turn, this can free up a huge amount of time for your reception staff, allowing them to focus on other tasks instead.
Fewer Booking Mistakes
Unfortunately, in our modern high-pressure environments, it’s not uncommon for mistakes to arise while booking patients for appointments. This could be booking patients in at the wrong time or on the wrong day, or it could include poor notes being taken and the like. Fortunately, online booking systems allow patients to book their care and services from home, allowing them more control over the booking system - reducing the risk of mistakes accordingly.
Enhanced Data Management
In many cases, ensuring that suitable information is taken when making bookings can be a little tricky, and ensuring this data remains private can be a little difficult too. Fortunately, thanks to their excellent security systems and in-built features such as appointment history, treatment plans, and medical records, online booking systems help ensure that data is available and accurate for all healthcare workers.
Affordable Solutions
In many cases, investing in healthcare technology can be an expensive process. However, online booking systems often change this trend. As relatively simple pieces of software, online booking systems usually won’t cost the earth to install on your property, making them excellent options to consider if you have been looking for a cost-effective and affordable solution overall.
#2 Patient Records Management
Following on from online booking systems, another vital healthcare technology to help streamline your healthcare business is a patient records management system, usually working electronic health records to improve patient care across the system.
Electronic health records allow your business to quickly input data and notes relating to a patient onto the system, making this a much more efficient way to manage your patients compared to traditional paper-based records. In addition, this can also allow your brand to keep patient notes for longer and without needing files and files of storage space, providing numerous benefits to the business accordingly.
Rapid Access to Information
One of the main benefits of investing in a patient records management system is that it can provide much more rapid access to information than traditional systems. Indeed, having to dig through paper records to find the appropriate patient’s notes can take a surprising amount of time, wasting your staff’s time at work and leaving patients waiting longer for support.
By investing in Electronic Health Systems, in contrast, patient information can be brought up immediately at the click of a button. This allows healthcare businesses to improve their operations and save a significant amount of time, thereby improving the efficiency of patient care services as a result.
Accurate Record Analysis
In addition to making patient information easier to find, patient record management systems can also offer a second benefit: they make it much easier for healthcare businesses to find information relating to a patient’s health.
Reading through pages and pages of notes to find information about a patient’s medical history can be incredibly time-consuming. However, with an EMS, healthcare businesses can use search functions to quickly identify information relevant to the case, such as history with a particular medication or health condition. In turn, this can allow healthcare professionals to take more rapid and accurate steps in improving patient care.
For example, for nursing homes, having access to a patient’s healthcare history can help nursing staff ensure that patients get the appropriate care and take their medications as expected. Meanwhile, for dental and hospital staff, being able to check a patient’s medical records quickly can help provide additional awareness of the patient’s history and whether any interventions could potentially have consequences or side effects based on the individual’s past.
Greater Ability to Store a Patient’s Notes
In many cases, storing paper-based notes can take up a huge amount of space. And, for patients who have a complex medical history and numerous pages of notes to browse through, this can become an understandable problem for storage.
Fortunately, patient records management software helps put this information online, negating the need for as many paper records (freeing up space for your business to use more efficiently as a result). This can also make it possible for healthcare businesses to take more comprehensive notes, which in turn can improve patient care and satisfaction overall.
#3 Stock Management Software
One of the most universal challenges for healthcare businesses across all sectors is the challenge of ordering suitable amounts of products and supplies, leaving a growing number of businesses (especially small brands with limited storage space) operating on a just-in-time policy.
There are many benefits associated with just-in-time stock ordering processes; however, when the products being ordered are urgent, any delays in the delivery can have a significant impact on the healthcare business. For example, this could leave pharmacies without stocks of essential medications; in the context of care homes and nursing providers, this could mean a lack of disposable health and cleaning products and the like.
Following this thought, investing in stock chain management software can offer a valuable and universal technology innovation for all healthcare businesses.
Reduced Risk of Running Out of Stock
Making sure your business has plenty of stock to hand (without ordering excessive amounts) can be a real challenge. This is made somewhat easier when consumption of stock is regular and predictable, but for fluctuating products, making sure your healthcare business doesn’t run out can become much more difficult. Fortunately, stock management software helps in this regard by identifying stock sale trends and automatically placing an order (or notifying staff to order) when supplies begin to fall; this helps ensure that deliveries are made in a timely and efficient manner.
Lowering Staff Pressure on Ordering Systems
Manual stock management can be incredibly time-consuming, with staff often spending many hours trying to ascertain current stock levels and determine how much of a particular product is left in storage. Fortunately, with stock management software, this process is fully automated, which can help save many hours manually counting products and placing orders.
Greater Storage Space
Ensuring that stock is ordered when it is needed - but not too early - can help enhance the amount of storage space your business has available, increasing efficiency as a result. Not only does this make it easier for staff members to find the products they need (as opposed to digging through warehouses and stock rooms that are piled high with unneeded goods), but it can also help free up space for other products or activities. In turn, this can make your healthcare business significantly more efficient as a result.
Better Customer Service and Fewer Unnecessary Trips
Ensuring customers and patients can get the healthcare products they need when they visit your business is surprisingly influential when it comes to your firm’s efficiency overall. This is especially pivotal for pharmacies and the like, where a lack of supplies can waste a significant amount of staff time.
In many cases, when your brand runs out of stock, staff may have to go looking for products for customers; this can be time-consuming, especially when they have other jobs to complete. As such, making sure that stock levels are high can reduce wasted time searching for products (while limiting the number of visits patients need to make). In turn, this can also help improve patient satisfaction with the business.
#4 E-Commerce and Telehealth Opportunities
Have you ever thought about investing in e-commerce and telehealth for your healthcare business? These systems are becoming rapidly more popular, and with the Telehealth industry growing by almost 20% year on year between 2018 and 2023 (largely spurred on by the COVID-19 pandemic), it’s easy to see why so many customers are expecting this technology to be available from their local healthcare businesses.
Fortunately, investing in e-commerce and Telehealth services can provide a wide range of benefits for healthcare businesses (particularly those focused on providing healthcare support, such as dentists, pharmacies, and GP surgeries).
Reduced Waiting Times for Patients
One of the main benefits of Telehealth technology for healthcare businesses is the reduced waiting times for patients. Telehealth allows businesses to provide consultations and meetings with patients in a much more efficient and rapid manner, and often at times when patients may otherwise be unable to visit in person.
This provides a range of benefits. From your business’s perspective, this can help reduce waiting times and allow the firm to see more patients than you might otherwise, increasing profitability and lowering staff stress accordingly.
Investing in Telehealth can also provide significant boosts to patients, allowing them to book a consultation practically; in doing so, you can significantly improve patient satisfaction with the business while simultaneously reducing the risk of patients’ conditions developing into a more significant problem (which may take more time to resolve).
Faster Turnaround Times for Products
For healthcare businesses that sell products, e-commerce can offer a lucrative and valuable opportunity to streamline services. By allowing customers to book and order products online, your business can reduce the number of customers visiting the business in person. In turn, this can free up a significant amount of time for your staff, allowing them to focus on other tasks rather than serving customers.
#5 Sensors and Monitoring Devices
In businesses such as hospitals and nursing homes, ensuring that patients are monitored regularly is vitally important, helping to ensure that any potential warning signs or complications are noticed and addressed rapidly. In turn, this can reduce the risk of patients suffering during their stay. However, this does traditionally require very close monitoring of patients directly, which can understandably be time-consuming for healthcare staff.
Fortunately, modern healthcare innovations are providing a technologically-backed solution to this challenge, allowing staff to monitor patients even more closely without having to continuously keep a direct eye on them. Monitoring devices can help complement traditional healthcare provision by measuring heart rate, activity levels, and the like. Some sensors also watch for signs of an elderly patient having a fall, which can allow staff to address this more promptly and help get the patient back on their feet more quickly.
Overall, sensors and monitoring devices can revolutionise the way that healthcare businesses take care of inpatients, thereby freeing up more time for staff while also improving the overall experience for patients. As such, investing in monitoring devices and sensors can undoubtedly be a valuable investment for such businesses; however, make sure you get permission from the patient to do so, as not all patients will necessarily be comfortable with these forms of monitoring systems.
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Final Thoughts
If you have been looking to streamline your healthcare business, considering investment in healthcare technology could help. Indeed, healthcare technologies are specifically designed to bolster efficiency.