PACS system: differences between digital and conventional radiography

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The X-ray scans are part of the routine of Health organizations, facilitating the diagnosis and monitoring of numerous diseases. The progress of digital radiography, through the PACS system  (Picture Archiving and Communication System), has changed the way Health professionals have access to the images, which are available at the moment in which the procedure is done, speeding up the preparation of the medical report and the routine of assistance. With the cloud computing allied to the model, the results are arranged where they are needed – in the office computer, in the operating room tablet or the doctor’s smartphone.

The digital radiography is based on the same principles of X-ray emission and its interaction with the human organism as conventional. The main difference between them is like the rays that pass through the matter that will be captured and processed to generate the image. In the traditional, radiographic plates are used that go through revelation. Already in direct digital radiography, X-rays are obtained by a circuit board sensitive to radiation, which generates a digital image and sends it to the computer in the form of electrical signals.

The test is accessed, processed and stored by PACS, which can be connected directly to the Patient Electronic Health Record (PEHP). In the indirect digital, the rays are captured by a phosphor plate that needs to be digitized for the image to be transmitted to the computer. Since then, it can be processed and destined for the most different premises, in the same way as direct radiography.

With this, one of the main disadvantages of conventional radiology is eliminated: the process of revealing the radiography. This stage generates toxic substances that pollute the environment. The proper radiography that was discarded over the years contributed to the generation of garbage. However, the disclosure process is done at least one hour, in the digital system the image is generated in seconds, optimizing the entire production process of the medical report. In addition to the advantages of top healthcare consulting firms in India, there is no need for extensive paper files to store conventionally printed exams.

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Another difference between the two types of examination is in the quality of the images. In conventional radiography, the emission of the exact amount of radiation is necessary.  An error in the dose can generate a much or little-contrasted image, which will not allow the identification of injuries with security. Same with the perfect technique, considering that the sharpness and contrast of conventional radiography are naturally lower, the patient is exposed to a higher amount of radiation than in the case of digital radiography so that an image of the same quality is produced.

The image processed by PACS has more sharpness, contrast, details, and differentiation of densities than conventional radiography, which optimizes the diagnosis and monitoring of diseases. As it is immediately generated in the computer, it can be quickly sent to the radiologist. That professional then issues the medical report for a remote specialist or for the doctor responsible for the patient who can already diagnose and initiate the appropriate treatment, thus providing greater agility and efficiency throughout the care process.

The hospital consultancy services in India optimizes the processing of the image in the computer, which allows the adjustment of the contrast, the equalization by histogram and even the subtraction of images to favor the identification of injuries.

Hospital cost accounting

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To overcome cost management, we must first pay attention to Health Management, that is, plan actions before directing resources and effort, which will avoid wasting energy, time and, mainly, money.  You can check the lack of planning through details, such as the lack of sustainability in the collection and storage of data, with each sector using different systems and without integration. This hinders the integral vision of the processes related to assistance and, consequently, widens the risk of rejection, which generates prejudice.

To avoid this unforeseen, it is necessary to invest in health IT solutions aimed at the optimization of cost management.

A management system (Enterprise Resource Planning – ERP), for example, unites all areas of the hospital, which automates and integrates processes. The technology reduces the mechanical tasks of the financial and accounting professionals, arranging them to reinforce the planning and the audit process of the accounts. Also, the tool integrates the information, which will avoid misinterpretations, errors of accounting records and divergences in billing that will lead to rejection.

But, for the management system to present these results, each process executed in the institution must be mapped and administered.

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Balance

The excellent management of hospital consultancy services in Delhi requires that attention is paid to the costs and supply of supplies, medicines and other essential items for the system. Thus, it is necessary to know the demand to make purchases intelligently. This will avoid two situations that can cause damage to the patient’s care:

  1. The absence of a first item for the provision of the service.
  2. The loss of materials due to expiration. These cause damage and compromise the operation of the hospital.

The ERP that controls the costs also acts in the intelligent management of the hospital warehouse, adding the processes of the pharmacy to those of the purchasing sector. The tool is supplied daily with the data that was generated in the patient’s care and visualizes, automatically, when, what is needed to buy and the quantity – what creates immediate reactions.

With this systemic and integrated vision, it becomes simpler to identify the errors that must be corrected to avoid financial problems. In this way, the institution guarantees long-term sustainability and remains far from the list of hospitals that need to wax their insolvency activities.

Expenses and revenues recognized in cost accounting are based on general accounting. Hospital cost accounting is, therefore, based on the principles of accounting standards, to produce regular and honest information.

Know the costs

The first objective is to know the costs and revenues of the various functions involved in the production of care, whether clinical, medical-technical or administrative functions.

Optimize management control

The cost accounting must allow management control to provide forward-looking information with the results of the cost accounting.

Facilitate management

Cost Accounting hospital consultancy in India provides information to management in order to facilitate appropriate decision-making.

 

7 strategies to reduce the average stay in the hospital

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When the subject is the number of days of hospitalization, not always “more” means “better. Thinking about strategies to manage the average permanence is essential to maintain the financial balance of the hospital and the quality of care, which guarantees patient safety.

Managing rooms efficiently and quickly are a direct indicator of hospital performance. It reflects a reduction in costs, optimization of processes and a reduction in the rate of infections and other adverse events. In a connected system, the doctor has online access to the results of exams and additional information and, thus, expedites the discharge. At the same time, the cleaning team receives the availability information of the room and organizes it much faster for the next hospitalization.

Know seven strategies to reduce the average permanence:

1- Control of the flow of the patient in the period of hospitalization- Decreases the unnecessary time of substantial assets of an institution, such as surgical center, hospital beds and Intensive Care Unit (ICU). The management depends on the healthcare consulting firms in India– doctors, nurses and administrative leaders- for more collaborative action, storage, and analysis of patient data from their entry into the emergency room to post-surgery, for example. It is also related to the use of devices that facilitate the routing of exams, prescription of medications and other stages necessary for health support.

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2- De-capitalization- Patients in treatment and recovery or those who need to undergo simple surgical procedures can be sent to a day hospital or be treated in the home care system, which avoids unnecessary hospitalization and provides space for critical care and emergencies

3- Online access to test results- With the implementation of internal collaboration and communication platforms, the doctor enjoys a consultation tool to access patient information and initiate the discharge process with more ease and agility.

4- Prescription and electronic clinical record-The report makes up an essential part of the Electronic Patient Clinical Record, a system that stores the individual’s history, including treatments, exams and prescriptions already made; that facilitates medical attention and the correct diagnosis.

5 – Extension of surgical procedures by robotics and arthroscopy- Accompanies the development of less invasive and more precise surgical techniques and methods, which allows rapid recovery to the patient.

6 – Reduction of the time of permanence- With the adoption of various process improvements, automation, and use of less invasive options and training of the medical and nursing team, the patient stays less time in the hospital. There is also the possibility of carrying out the transfer of chronic and long-term patients for home care.

7 – Implementation of clinical protocols- These instruments help professionals in decision making – be they simple or complex – that demand clinical paradigms and reliable theoretical subsidies, and streamline the entire assistance process.

With strategies that align management and hospital consultancy services, the time of hospitalizations is reduced, but there is more intelligence in the use of resources and less risk to the patient.

Internet of Things in Health: Internet of the Patient?

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What are the forecasts for the Internet of Things in the health sector? To get an idea, we pointed out two aspects: on the one hand, the use of the term IoHT – Internet of Healthcare Things, in its acronym in English – has already been extended to refer to the practical utilities of the IoT in health. On the other hand, healthcare is already the second activity associated with interconnected devices, behind manufacturing, distribution, and logistics. Can we then talk about the Patient’s Internet?

The Internet of Things, allied to the healthcare professional

Many devices and objects, now interconnected, can provide a significant amount of data and medical information – documentation and medical records – in real time, data stored in the cloud for later analysis and management by healthcare equipment planners that offer significant savings of space and costs. A set of information that helps the health professional to manage and monitor the status of patients and, also, makes it possible to speed up emergency actions since the doctor will count with a click of the patient’s clinical history and needs.

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In this sense, the IoT is already being used for the remote monitoring of patients through the wearable devices to know in real time different health variables and to be able to act in case of emergency. Also, this remote control allows establishing medical visits when the device detects that consultation is necessary, thus saving time and costs to patients and improving recovery rates. On the other hand, it encourages the self-care of the sick, capable of managing and controlling their health from their home.

However, it is useless to have large amounts of information if you do not carry out an analysis and interpretation of the information obtained. The IoT opens the doors to an analysis of  behaviors and habits on a larger scale and allows to cross the information with other epidemiological variables, for the implementation of public health policies that help improve the quality of care based on the analyzes and predictions obtained.

The sensors, more than a trend

The use and implementation of sensors go far beyond the control of healthy variables by the patient since there are numerous tools to be applied within the health center, with the objective of monitoring medical and health equipment and helping the patient in their recovery -like the smart beds. It allows you to adjust positions depending on the movements of patient- or for remote control of parameters such as temperature or noise of hospital rooms, to help ensure compliance at all times the highest quality of healthcare service. The role of sensors in health management will become increasingly important.

The dares of the Internet of Things in health

Some challenges of this technology implementation involve the initial investment for the integration of the data in the different systems of the health centers, ensuring interchangeability, as well as the implementation of supervision systems by hospital equipment planners that provide continued preventive maintenance. On the other hand, training health professionals on the management of innovative devices and software on the network, and providing maximum security and privacy of patient data should also be a priority to incorporate the health sector to these latest technological advances.

How Should a Strategic Hospital Plan Be?

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The impact of the current economic crisis strongly affected own health. Failure to pay state securities (through public agreements), increase in medical glosses, delays in payments by health plan operators: the environment of uncertainty in the sector is evidence of the importance of having hospital consultancy services. It is possible to prepare the institution for the future, identifying potential obstacles and making the necessary adaptations to neutralize threats and take advantage of opportunities.

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The problem is that most of the managers of the segment do not know how efficient planning should be, or make wrong decisions, cut investments where they cannot, do not maintain excellent communication with employees about the mission of the company. Then, thinking about those difficulties, we elaborated the information of today to clarify the functioning of that process.

What is strategic hospital planning?

Strategic planning is a corporate process created to facilitate the reach of the desired situation in the future, through studies to diagnose critical factors that may impede the growth of the company. The aim is to establish a path that must be followed in a long-term systemic manner, designed to strengthen the organization with the ability to interact better with external factors.

In this way, it is possible to adapt to any scenario reducing uncertainties. It is straightforward: hospital planners and medical equipment consultants are a compass oriented towards the future, serving to communicate to employees, patients and investors its mission (the company’s differential in the market), vision (what the company wants to be in the future). ) and its values (principles that direct the decisions of the organization).

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How is this process structured?

Hospital strategic planning is usually structured in stages: Vital diagnosis

At that stage, we must seek to answer the question: in what position is my hospital about the market? And to facilitate the analysis, the phase can be divided into:

  • Identification of the vision
  • Identification of the values
  • Internal and external analysis
  • Competition analysis

The mission of the institution

At that time, you already know where you want your hospital to arrive, but you may not know where you are now. Here you can define the reason for the existence of the institution, a stage that can be divided as follows:

  • Definition of the mission of the hospital: What is the difference between your hospital and the others?
  • Establishment of current and potential purposes: description of the action segments in which the hospital acts or intends to operate.
  • Elaboration and debate of scenarios: design of situations that can describe what will happen with the institution in the future- created using physical techniques (projections of socioeconomic data, census data, for example) or subjective (opinions of hospital space planners in the sector).
  • Development of the strategic position: formulation of the most appropriate strategies for the hospital to achieve its purposes, since respecting the results of the SWOT analysis previously carried out.
  • Definition of macro strategy and macro policies: guidelines or general actions that the institution must follow to achieve its objectives.

Quantitative and prescriptive instruments

The time has come to transform the mission into objectives, challenges, goals, and indicators so that everything that must be done to make the hospital a reference becomes concrete.

Hospital Planning Will No Longer Be Based Mainly on the Number of Beds

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The first question that health authorities often ask about hospitals is, “How many beds do you have?” Traditionally, this indicator has been one of the most iconic units of measurement of health planning and one of the most emblematic resources in the psychology of patients.

However, the hospital bed will no longer be such a significant point of reference. This is because of the convergence of factors that intensify and have generated changes in the organization of health systems and the role of hospitals within them.

Hospitals face new challenges

The primary factor in the midst of these new trends is the demographic and epidemiological transition – older populations and a higher burden of chronic diseases and multiple pathologist. This generates a growing demand for services in a general context of secured financing. Also, the pressure on health spending intensifies due to the high inflation rates in the sector, the new high-cost technologies, and the inefficiencies of the systems historically oriented to pay attention to acute conditions in the face of the wave of synchronicity.

The patients themselves have also transformed the way hospital consultancy services in India work. They are increasingly better informed about health, are more proactive in the management of their conditions and have higher expectations about the quality of services. Likewise, information and communication technologies allow new ways of interaction between health personnel and patients, as well as the spatial configuration of services.

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To survive, adaptation is mandatory

There are several ways in which hospitals are responding to this new reality, among which the following stand out:

– Articulation of hospitals in integrated networks of diversified services. Advances in medical technology associated with outpatient surgery and hospital consultancy services (in oncology, for example), the predominance of the chronic patient, and the development of information and communication technologies (ICT) make it possible to transfer services outside the hospital, through tel monitoring recovery and home hospitalization, remote consultations, and medicine.

Also, complementary health services are being configured, such as long-term intermediate care for subacute patients, which seek to reduce the risk of acquired infections in hospitals and use beds efficiently. To adequately care for chronic patients with multiple pathologist, greater continuity of care, multidisciplinary, integration with social health services and strengthened primary care are required.

– Specialization of the offer. The traditional model of the general hospital with a portfolio of similar services has proved unviable in many countries. Therefore, it is increasingly common to find hospitals with a particular focus to increase patient volumes to optimize quality and reduce unit costs. This phenomenon, together with the departure of non-acute patients to secondary health services, is resulting in hospitals that concentrate a higher proportion of complex cases and require more sophisticated medical-surgical interventions.

Consequently, in some countries, there is a reduction in the number of beds for acute patients and also a shorter average stay, associated with the perfection of medical technologies.

– New collaboration and contracting relationships. Hospitals traditionally operated entirely autonomously; however, it is more efficient to structure some independent services that can serve multiple providers. Diagnostic imaging and laboratory, for example, were the first to use this model, maximizing the productivity of technology and human resources of high cost and limited, which could hardly be absorbed by a single entity. Likewise, different providers are integrating clinical services through the creation of unique teams, the exchange or rotation of professionals and residents, the adoption of standard protocols, the joint accounting of production, and the use of ICT.

Hospital Architects Help to Create Your Business Image

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Hospital decoration design is a mixed public building in civil construction. With the evolution of the times and the advancement of science and technology. The old hospital buildings have not adapted to the new needs of modern clinical medicine for the diagnosis and treatment environment. The internal layout of the hospital building slowly formed a sensible and useful overall direction for each functional department (outpatient, ward, and medical technology).  The decorative design of the hospital saves the time for patient treatment and improves the hospital’s service efficiency.

The hospital design brand is not inherent and requires long-term cultivation and construction. The construction of hospital design brand culture is also indispensable. Many people believe that brand hospitals with broad cultural and profound backgrounds and brands lacking cultural heritage may become market competitions.

The rush of passing passengers will only leave a short-term memory. Hospital management consultancy in India advocate the cultural connotation of brand building, that is, let the culture lead the brand and make the intangible drive tangible. The facts show that the hospital’s brand building innovation and perseverance will only be rooted in the fertile soil of hospital culture.

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Hospital design is the soul of the brand building

The hospital design brand building is not only the manufacturing of tangible things but also the creation of dark atmosphere. With the increasing homogeneity of medical technology, hospital culture has played an increasingly important role in promoting hospital reform and development because of its unique charm. This is obvious to all. Similarly, brand building is also inseparable from the construction of hospital culture. The primary values are taken as the core of hospital culture construction.

The essence of the hospital design brand building is the shaping of subject values, which is separated from the shaping of subject values, and brand building is like “the skin. If there is no, Mao will be attached to the metaphor, the brand building will become wood without a source of water, and the brand building will fall into the predicament. Therefore, cultural construction is the soul of the brand building.

Hospital design and brand building complement each other

Hospital design leads to the brand building. Similarly, the brand building also provides an excellent platform for hospital culture construction. Most of the medical institutions in the country are now carrying out extensive hospital cultural construction, and the brand building platform will promote the development of hospital culture and indeed put the core values of “people-oriented” and “cultural people” in hospital culture into practice. To play an active role in hospital reform and development.

The difference between hospital design and other brands 

Hospital design is different from corporate products. It does not have a life cycle. As long as it is properly kept safe, it may become prosperous. On the other hand, hospital designers & planners are focused on pursuing social benefits.

Best Services of hospital designers & planners

This differs from other brands. Brand building in enterprises or businesses is mostly a strategic choice based on maximization of profits and stabilization. It is a means to protect their interests. The purpose of hospital brand building is to pursue the best status of quality, safety, service, cost, and performance, to improve the skills and level of medical services, and to meet the growing population’s medical care as much as possible. Health care needs, this is the fundamental purpose of hospital brand building.

Beware of Errors in Hospital Management

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With the advance of evidence-based medicine, there is a growing concern to avoid errors in medical practice and inpatient care, but there is still much to be developed and improved regarding management errors and how they also affect the performance of the hospital and the patient’s health. Although its consequences are not necessarily as immediate as that of a medical error, the management error can end up having a more significant impact, affecting several patients for an extended period.

Now that you are familiar with the peculiarities of hospital management, it is time to examine how they can become traps and generate errors as shown below: Not planning changes well

Changes are necessary, but it is essential to prepare before initiating any action. You should assess the current situation of the hospital and the situation in which you want the hospital to be in a few years, establish the objectives and goals, define the equipment and resources available for the change, verify which market movement and only then begin to Act.

The change of hospital management system, for example, can impact the hospital for decades, positively or not, then it must be done with excellent security. For all this, it is necessary to reflect on what is the best software, what is the best equipment, what are the advantages presented by each option, how long should you wait for the return of the investment.

The indicators in hospital management to be attentive

When it comes to management, there is no way not to address the indicators, and in hospital management, it could not be otherwise. Only through hospital management consultancy in India it is possible to evaluate the progress of the hospital and verify that the changes are generating positive results or if there are failures in any sector.

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The indicator, therefore, should serve for the continuous improvement of the hospital processes, helping in the mapping of risks, in the identification of occurrences and their causes-origins, in the simultaneous management of multiple projects and the linkage of these to the strategic plan of the hospital. With the indicator, it is also possible to predict crises and plan ways to solve or minimize them.

It is worth noting that the performance indicators, which are associated with patient satisfaction with the assistance provided. The signs are, therefore, essential management tools for the evaluation of the quality of the two services provided and for the control of resources and costs.

Every indicator must exist for a specific reason, giving the manager valuable information about the hospital in the areas of organization, resources and work methodology and helping in making decisions.

It is essential that the manager takes into account that the indicators try to represent merely a complicated situation, indirectly impacting reality and evaluating the hospital through necessary mathematical reports. The index gains strength, not in the meantime when compared with other indicators, whether from other areas or the same locality over time.

In this way, the calculation of an indicator is only the beginning of the process. It is necessary that this information is constantly updated, made available for the hospital team, for patients and for other hospitals, compared with other indicators and only then used in management.

It should be regarded that the quality of an indicator depends directly on the accuracy of the data used and from the calculations. Therefore, it is recommended that the hospital management consultancy services are always automated and does not rely directly on manual operations.

Advantages of Adopting Hospital Management Software

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The management procedure of a hospital is hectic, concluding related activities from the financial side, through the administrative sector and human resources, to nutrition and diagnostic medicine. It is not difficult to visualize, therefore, that the administration of this amount of different tasks and information consumes a lot of time and generates a lot of work for the managers. In the meantime, the software developed explicitly for hospital management emerged as facilitators of that routine, upgrading the quality of the services provided and the safety of the patients served. Do you want to know other benefits?

Agility for day to day

Hospital consultancy services in India provides the automation of the activities involved in the routine of administration, from the scheduling of examinations to the classification of risks of patients in triage. In this way, the tasks are accomplished in a more natural and agiler way, which optimizes the tempo of the managers and the officers, decreasing the weight of the patients for the due attention.

Construction of electronic information bases

Hospital management software has its platforms to receive the different types of information, allowing the creation of varying information bases (financial, administrative or medical records of patients). In this way, the management and control of hospital data are facilitated.

Use of electronic clinical records

Another significant advantage of hospital management software is the possibility of generating electronic clinical records for health experts and patients treated by the hospital. With the use of these records, it is possible to store your registration, medical information, and exams in one place. In this way, this clinical information may be available to all professionals involved in their care, facilitating diagnosis and expediting the routine of the medical team.

Reduction in the rate of human errors

The adoption of electronic medical records improves patient safety, once the prescriptions of medicines and therapies become more readable. Also, this computerization of the medical information registry enables the realization of proactive validations of clinical data, such as pharmacological versus allergic relationships and the different interactions between drugs, diagnoses, and examinations.

Optimization of hospital costs

The main benefits of hospital management consulting company is the modification of the prices of the organization. Specific platforms for financial control allow, for example, the organization of cash flow enabling a rigid control of all hospital expenses. In this method, it is possible to identify and eliminate unnecessary costs, relocate resources for the most productive activities and increase the profits of the health institution, without neglecting the safety of patients.

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Online scheduling of consultations and exams

Nothing more comfortable for a patient than the possibility of scheduling appointments and reviews online, without having to leave the house or listen to automatic messages from the call center. Hospital management software offers specific platforms for this scheduling, increasing comfort for patients and decreasing costs with call center systems.

Ease of access to information

As we have told, the electronic hospital management soft ware’s allow the combination of the data of the various sectors of the hospital (such as the pharmacy, the workshop, and the image clinics), so that the information is remotely obtainable by the officials. In this way, it is possible to avoid that the professionals involved are lost in the health units, optimizing the time of dedication to the patient.

Why Offer Scheduling of Online Appointments For Patients?

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The online scheduling of appointments and examinations in hospitals, diagnostic centers, and laboratories is no longer a complete novelty, and it has been created with the aim of giving more practicality to patients and reducing costs. It is the way for any company in the health sector want to improve your profit margin, improving the level of patient satisfaction and your credibility in the market. So, how have some hospitals presented unpredictable results? The difference in performance between one institution and another is explained by the quality of the system implemented and by the way in which this new dynamic is integrated into the routine of health institutions.

Most claims against health institutions are generally complaints about inadequate care, wrong information, and long wait time on the phone to schedule an appointment or an exam. The curious thing is to perceive that in the middle of the information age, many hospitals, diagnostic centers, and laboratories insist on carrying out the agendas manually.

Observing that many health institutions still do not have health care equipment planners and appointment scheduling online or use the tool through low-quality solutions, we decided to write this article. We will show the advantages of implementing the system, the errors that should be avoided so that the institution perceives the difference of results of that initiative directly in its monthly financial statements and demonstrations. Come with us:

What advantages do these systems usually bring?

We can start by advancing what an online scheduling system offers:

  • End of the long waiting time for agendas;
  • Flexibility for the patient to schedule their appointment in any of the 24 hours a day, seven days a week;
  • Better overall patient experience;
  • Reduction of costs with the payment of third-party customer service (contact center) or payroll telemarketing attendants when directly supported by the institution;
  • Elimination of scheduling errors;
  • Removal of scheduling of 2 appointments for the same doctor, at the same time due to the failure of communication between employees;
  • Reduction of absenteeism rates with the facilitation of the scheduling flow and availability of alert modules to patients;
  • Credibility and professionalism conferred on the institution.

In practice, we talk about something much more significant than the simple electronic scheduling of medical appointments. That’s because, generally, that functionality is only an integral part of a complete health management system that many state-of-the-art institutions already use. In a broad panorama, we have a robust performance management software that is constituted, a global IT solution in health, whose scheduling of online appointments and exams is only one of its utilities.

Modules of online exam results eliminate a good part of the rows in the reception of the institutions, guarantee operation 24 hours per day, in addition to better management of the flow and variations in the demand and sending of SMS messages as a reminder to the patients regarding the scheduled procedures. Several advantages justify the need of top healthcare consulting firms in India. All without trying the dashboard developed based on Business Intelligence, which presents indicators, data crossing, and issuance of graphical reports beneficial for strategic decision making.