Expand Hospital Productivity by Enterprise Content Management (ECM) System
ECM is a critical requirement
Hospitals and clinics across the world are increasingly implementing enterprise content management (ECM) systems to deliver the right information to relevant physicians, diagnostic labs, and hospital administration departments whenever needed. ECM can access and process unstructured information (in the form of clinical data, lab tests, patient history, insurance claims processing data, patient X-ray images, and so on) and securely access and process the information.
Expert opinion
According to Aaron Koehler, a senior software engineer at Virginia-based Sentara Healthcare, in the modern healthcare landscape, about 75% of information is in the form of unstructured data.
Key processes for maximum impact
The use of an ECM system ensures the smooth flow of major clinical processes in minimum time. Some of the key elements integrated through the ECM system include:
• Clinical and Health Information Management.
• Revenue Cycle Management (RCM).
• Administrative Department.
• Billing department invoice processing.
Lots of benefits
Some of the many benefits of an ECM system are:
• Helps ensure federal and state regulatory compliance — adheres to current and future health care organization, legal, regulatory, and industry compliance policies.
• Enables the organization to adapt to changing regulations.
• Reduces legal risks.
• Assists in understanding and following policies and procedures.
Ensures improved automation and workflow of electronic documentation related to healthcare accounts payable and material management processes.
Improve medical records retrieval time by 50%.
A custom content management system (CMS) holds the key
It would be wise for the healthcare industry to opt for a custom ECM system, rather than taking the simple approach of implementing a readily available off-the-shelf ECM system.
An in-depth analysis of current and future information needs specific to the physician practice business will help identify the feature sets of the proposed ECM system. Such a system will help to tightly integrate hospital/clinical subsystems such as help desk and service, registration and discharge, clinical workflow, laboratory evaluation, medical billing, and financial department, pharmacy, and medical stores.
After a customized ECM system is installed, conducting a pilot trial will help fine-tune the workflow, so that the clinic/hospital gets the most out of the system. The ECM system must be continually reviewed to implement ongoing changes in regulations over time. In addition, it pays to benchmark similar installed ECM systems installed in the neighborhood. This will help in adding more enhancement steps.
