Medical professionals already know that the right medical software is key to attracting, retaining, and growing your clientele base. This of course includes user-facing software like EMR software or health record keeping programs, or even HIPAA compliant automated appointment reminders.
In today’s digital age, the software you choose impacts every aspect of business. From wait times to time wasting playing tech support to providers and patients alike, the wrong choice can cost your practice big bucks.
But across the board, a few key tenants of the right medical software hold steadfast. Regardless of the type of medical program you are looking to implement or replace in your practice, keep these things in mind.
Here are five helpful tips to help you choose the right medical software for your medical business.
Broad Compatibility
First and foremost your technology needs to be able to keep up with the times, because, when it comes to technology, the times change fast!
Whether it’s the latest wearable or the next big thing in virtual care management, you want to stay competitive when it comes to medical technology. As our lives take place increasingly in the virtual space, there is so much room for growth. You want your medical business to grow with it.
User Friendliness
A program is not worth its salt if there is not a soul that wants to use it. User friendliness is not just for your employees’ convenience, however. It is to ensure that any user-facing interfaces are pleasant, too. If you are using an electronic medical records or EMR platform that has a public facing user interface, then your choice of software is a reflection on your business as a whole.
But in addition to an attractive interface, it needs to be intuitive for a broad swath of users as well. There’s nothing quite as frustrating as realizing your shiny new software does not work for half of your patients or their parents and requires an IT team to manage.
Finding the least tech savvy of your organization and asking them to give the technology a quick eye can be helpful in determining what the feedback might be in your customer base.
HIPAA Compliance
HIPAA stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. HIPAA is a code of discretion and preservation by which all medical practices must abide, by law. Deciding who gets access to your medical information and when is the core of HIPAA law.
Medical professionals must abide by HIPAA by ensuring physical, administrative, and technical protection over medical records. This is not just applicable to doctors or even just nurses but everyone employed by the medical practice. All in all, anyone who can call their customers “patients” in good conscience is abiding by HIPAA laws.
HIPAA compliance is of the utmost importance when you are perusing your options for your medical practice’s next software. Your first question should be asking how highly HIPAA compliance is prioritized and how, exactly, the software lives up to these expectations of privacy.
And if you don’t know if you have the technical know how to discern the compliance, consult with a professional. It’s worth a small investment up front if you can ensure security for years of service to come!
Secure Patient Outreach
In keeping with HIPAA regulations, when communicating with patients on a regular basis you have to be very careful to maintain professional, timely, and discreet.
But automated methods of reaching patients can save your practice tons of time, money, and energy wasted on hunting them down. Instead, you can invest in a medical service software or electronic records software that does that job for you.
Sending out appointment reminders, automating check in and out procedures, digitizing the task of requesting records: all of these things that take up hours of clerk’s time can be better spent elsewhere when you have a program that does the heavy lifting for you.
Customer Care
The transitional period between integrating new software into existing systems or changing between software is a task which could leave patient information vulnerable to being damaged or lost.
To minimize this risk, you want to take care that you get your choice in medical software right the first time. But this is, of course, easier said than done. One of the earliest, telltale signs of a poor choice in software is a subpar customer service experience provided by the company itself.
After all, if you intend on being saddled with them for the foreseeable future, you should know how they perform under pressure. When you are in the early stages of vetting a software company, keep in mind that they should be courting you!
Medical professionals already know that the right medical software is key to attracting, retaining, and growing your clientele base. This of course includes user-facing software like EMR software or health record keeping programs, or even HIPAA compliant automated appointment reminders.
In today’s digital age, the software you choose impacts every aspect of business. From wait times to time wasting playing tech support to providers and patients alike, the wrong choice can cost your practice big bucks.
But across the board, a few key tenants of the right medical software hold steadfast. Regardless of the type of medical program you are looking to implement or replace in your practice, keep these things in mind.
Here are five helpful tips to help you choose the right medical software for your medical business.
Broad Compatibility
First and foremost your technology needs to be able to keep up with the times, because, when it comes to technology, the times change fast!
Whether it’s the latest wearable or the next big thing in virtual care management, you want to stay competitive when it comes to medical technology. As our lives take place increasingly in the virtual space, there is so much room for growth. You want your medical business to grow with it.
User Friendliness
A program is not worth its salt if there is not a soul that wants to use it. User friendliness is not just for your employees’ convenience, however. It is to ensure that any user-facing interfaces are pleasant, too. If you are using an electronic medical records or EMR platform that has a public facing user interface, then your choice of software is a reflection on your business as a whole.
But in addition to an attractive interface, it needs to be intuitive for a broad swath of users as well. There’s nothing quite as frustrating as realizing your shiny new software does not work for half of your patients or their parents and requires an IT team to manage.
Finding the least tech savvy of your organization and asking them to give the technology a quick eye can be helpful in determining what the feedback might be in your customer base.
HIPAA Compliance
HIPAA stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. HIPAA is a code of discretion and preservation by which all medical practices must abide, by law. Deciding who gets access to your medical information and when is the core of HIPAA law.
Medical professionals must abide by HIPAA by ensuring physical, administrative, and technical protection over medical records. This is not just applicable to doctors or even just nurses but everyone employed by the medical practice. All in all, anyone who can call their customers “patients” in good conscience is abiding by HIPAA laws.
HIPAA compliance is of the utmost importance when you are perusing your options for your medical practice’s next software. Your first question should be asking how highly HIPAA compliance is prioritized and how, exactly, the software lives up to these expectations of privacy.
And if you don’t know if you have the technical know how to discern the compliance, consult with a professional. It’s worth a small investment up front if you can ensure security for years of service to come!
Secure Patient Outreach
In keeping with HIPAA regulations, when communicating with patients on a regular basis you have to be very careful to maintain professional, timely, and discreet.
But automated methods of reaching patients can save your practice tons of time, money, and energy wasted on hunting them down. Instead, you can invest in a medical service software or electronic records software that does that job for you.
Sending out appointment reminders, automating check in and out procedures, digitizing the task of requesting records: all of these things that take up hours of clerk’s time can be better spent elsewhere when you have a program that does the heavy lifting for you.
Customer Care
The transitional period between integrating new software into existing systems or changing between software is a task which could leave patient information vulnerable to being damaged or lost.
To minimize this risk, you want to take care that you get your choice in medical software right the first time. But this is, of course, easier said than done. One of the earliest, telltale signs of a poor choice in software is a subpar customer service experience provided by the company itself.
After all, if you intend on being saddled with them for the foreseeable future, you should know how they perform under pressure. When you are in the early stages of vetting a software company, keep in mind that they should be courting you!
