Boost-up Hospital Productivity by Enterprise Content Management (ECM) System

ECM is a Critical Need

Hospitals and clinics across the US are increasingly implementing the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system, so that the right information is made available to the concerned physicians, diagnostic labs, and hospital administration departments, whenever required. ECM helps to manage unstructured information (in form of clinical data, lab tests, patient histories, insurance claims processing data, patient X-ray images, and so on, (from multiple sources and images) and securely access, process, and store information.

Expert Opinion

In the modern-day healthcare scenario, about 75% of information is in the form of unstructured data, according to Aaron Koehler, a senior software engineer at Virginia-based Sentara Healthcare.

Key Processes for Maximized Impact

ECM system usage ensures smooth flow of major clinical processes in the shortest time. Some of the key elements that are integrated by the ECM system include:

• Clinical and Health Information Management.
• Revenue Cycle Management (RCM).
• Administrative Department.
• Billing Department invoice processing.

Benefits Galore

Some of the many benefits of ECM systems are:

• Helps to ensure federal and state regulatory compliance – Adheres to healthcare organization’s present and future, legal, regulatory and industry compliance policies.
• Empowers the organization to adapt to changing rules and regulations.
• Reduces legal risks.
• Helps in understanding and following policies and procedures.
• Ensures better automation and workflow of electronic documents related to healthcare accounts payable and materials management processes.
• Improve medical records retrieval time to the tune of 50%.

Customized Content Management System (CMS) Holds the Key

It would be prudent for healthcare industry to go in for a customized ECM system, rather than opt for an easy way to implement readily available off-the-shelf ECM system. An in-depth analysis of existing and future information needs that are specific to the physician practice business would help to identify feature-sets for the proposed ECM system. Such a system will help to tightly integrate the hospital/clinical subsystems such as helpdesk and service, registration and discharge, clinical workflows, laboratory diagnosis, medical billing and financial department, pharmacy and medical stores.

Once a customized ECM system is installed, conducting a pilot trial would enable fine tuning the workflows, so that the clinic/hospital derives maximum leverage from the system. The ECM system should be constantly assessed and reviewed to implement on-going changes in regulations with the passage of time. In addition, it pays to benchmark the installed ECM system with similar ones installed in the neighbourhood area. This will help in incorporating further enhancement measures.

Software tools: Feature rich software tools with simple and searchable modules have been developed to cater for the specific needs of the healthcare industry. These tools should be tried out in the facility to ascertain their suitability.

Consult BillingParadise for ECM-related Issues: BillingParadise has the professional wherewithal to offer ECM-specific tips for all types of healthcare organizations across the US.