Hospitals are rarely a single department entity. They usually span multiple specialties focusing on different areas of treatment, 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, which can range in complexity from brain surgeries to fixing overhead lamps.
And a single organization may have hospitals across multiple locations, making it difficult to manage them all. A hospital management system helps you to manage the enormous complexities of efficiently managing the hospital in a sustainable manner.
Even though hospitals span across a number of different areas, in the beginning, it usually involves only a couple of departments and just the basic 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 huge flow of data.
A hospital management system that could easily be scaled up could make this whole process much faster and easier.
As the number of departments and employees grows, the management system would also grow to accommodate the conditions created by the growth, thus aiding the growth of the hospital, instead of being a hindrance.
Scale up – The role of a cloud-based system
A cloud-based online system has a lot of advantages compared to an offline system when it comes to scaling up. They could easily be updated to add more departments and employees, without having to reinstall the updated version in all the systems in a hospital. Instead of making changes in all systems in a hospital network, the changes would have to be made only by the software providers. And since the software and its interface remains 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. As new locations come up, the software could simply be updated to include them, and here also, the existing management network could seamlessly be integrated without any additional training. The data generated from all the hospitals run by the same organization could be integrated and analyzed, to improve overall performance.
This 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 therefore, improved efficiency for the entire network.
Resource management and reduction of wastage :
A good hospital management system would also help to prevent any unwanted waste of resources. Efficient management of the inventory, of the various pieces of equipment, and disposables, would cut short the resources otherwise wasted. In the process of scaling up, there is usually an increased wastage of resources, due to the purchase of excess materials to prevent a shortage. With an efficient system, such wastages could easily be detected and avoided. This could provide for a smooth scale-up from a small hospital to a large network of hospitals, 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. For a hospital with its already large amount of data generated a scale-up could be a headache without an adequate system to manage the data. Every bit of data has to be analyzed and compiled in a manner that is easy to understand, so as to make correct decisions at every corner.
An efficient hospital management system would make this entire process a cakewalk by managing the data generated in real time in a smooth and easily understood manner. In a good 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, and this leads to quicker and easier decision making process, and therefore an easier, smoother and efficient scale up.
Management of the extra human resource required for scale-up :
The efficient running of a hospital requires that all the stakeholders play their roles, and for enabling this, they should be able to manage their work, in an easy and intuitive way. A good hospital management system allows the smooth delegation of work and allows 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 it should also allow the pharmacist to easily track the inventory. 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 up.
In short, a good hospital management system would make it easier to scale up the hospital network by easily managing the resources, avoiding wastage, making an efficient workforce, and better management of data. Such a system could provide hassle-free care for the patient, and make everyone’s work much easier.
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