How to improve your patient experience by having everything digitalized & connected!

By Lana Bawaneh

Many, if not all of us, have experienced the hassles of going to hospitals or medical centres. The healthcare sector is one of the most complicated sectors because it has a lot of departments or entities that are related to each other; when describing the healthcare sector, we are talking about a hospital, medical centre, clinic, polyclinic, pharmacy, lab, radiology, or it could be a combination of some or all of them.

It is very important to develop software applications or systems that support healthcare services to provide the best medical treatment. The problem here is that some of the medical institutions have one or few of their entities switched to digital processes, while the other entities are still handling their processes manually.

This issue has created a gap among all the entities/departments because of the lack of communications and failure in integration.

This article will map the patient journey and talk about how important it is to have a comprehensive software system that can allow seamless integration among different healthcare entities/departments. 

Finding value through patients’ journey

Let’s take a closer look into the patient’s journey in a healthcare facility and examine all the phases that the patient goes through and try to identify the gaps and find solutions to any obstacles.

Patients' Journey

When describing a patient journey in a hospital, the first thing that comes to mind is the registration or the admission process at the reception area. This is where every patient will have to provide his/her information, medical records, and insurance data. A good system will be able to accelerate this operation and reduce the time, effort, and resources needed to complete it.

The patient will then have to go to the doctor’s clinic for a diagnosis. When using a computer system, the process of coordinating and managing patients’ appointments will be very easy. At the clinic, the patient will not have to repeat the same steps that were done in admission because all the provided information will be transferred to the doctor’s office in an instant.

After examining the patient, the medical report provided by the doctor will be kept in the patient’s file. This report then may need to be transferred to other departments, like the insurance for approval purposes, the radiology department if any images are required, a pharmacy in order to dispense prescription medicine, and the laboratory if any tests are requested.

  

Document archiving and data circulation in the healthcare sector are very important due to the sensitivity of the data they contain. The systems that are handling these tasks have to be very secure and well-organized to allow data archiving and retrieval easily and securely.

Either at radiology centres or in labs, when certain tests are requested from the doctor, they usually reach the specialists immediately through a digitalized system. The results are sent back to the doctor and are archived in the patient’s file. This seems like a long process, but when performed using a computer system, it is done without a hassle.

In the last step, the patient goes to the accounting department. All the provided services such as the doctor’s fees, images, tests, treatments, and perceptions will be calculated, so the patient can be charged for them.

These digital systematic processes have great impacts on reducing human errors since all the data are stored in the system. Also, it speeds up operational workflow, as retrieving and reviewing data will be done in no time. It is worth mentioning that increasing customer satisfaction depends on the efficiency and quality of the provided services, and successful patient experience is a major component of service efficiency and quality.

  

It is very important to have one comprehensive healthcare system that allows easy integration between all the modules that cover the different entities and departments in the healthcare institutions. Such a system will not only make it easier for patients, but it will also streamline the internal processes for maximum efficiency.

Flexible healthcare software systems can be modified and customized to suit small medical centres or large multi-specialities hospitals. ESKADENIA Software provides a wide variety of healthcare software systems; click this link to find out about ESKADENIA’s powerful and flexible software for the healthcare industry.