8 Best Practices for Effective Hospital Management

There are approximately 2,00,000+ hospitals worldwide.

Most of them struggle with effective patient, documentation, and communication management.

The situation is awful for clinical and administrative staff as they are performing every task under a high work burden.

When we asked 30+ hospital stakeholders, most of them agreed.

They want to simplify both clinical and administrative to help healthcare staff manage every task efficiently.

Because it is the only way to provide the best possible care to the patients.

Thus, we have built a powerful tech solution for hospital management to let both clinical and administrative staff execute and control their workflows with less frustration.

We will show you how with the help of our solution, you can make your hospital management effective.

What Makes Hospital Management Effective?

In simple terms,

Delivering ideal patient care experience and outcomes are the factors that make hospital management effective.

But remember – without putting medical and administrative staff under a high work burden.

In technical terms,

If the hospital is performing every clinical and business task without compromising the operational and medical costs, quality of care, and well-being of the healthcare staff, then we can safely say that – it is effective hospital management.

The Benefits of Effective Hospital Management Workflows

Its major benefit is that – it gives all the data in one place that allows medical staff to focus on the patient care experience effectively and efficiently.

Apart from that, the following are other benefits of effective workflow management in the hospital. 

• Helps to streamline all the clinical and administrative tasks

• Improves the patient care experience, safety, and satisfaction

• Helps in lowering unnecessary clinical hours

• Ensures operation efficiency without compromising the quality of care, costs, and time

• Lowers the chances of medical errors

• It also helps in reducing the burnout of the healthcare staff.

• Helps medical staff to communicate in a faster, more effective, and more efficient manner

• Boosts patient safety with integrated safety measures
• Reduces wait time for patients
• Effective resource allocation and reduced waste
• Rapid decision-making with clear roles and responsibilities
• Accurate information sharing among healthcare team members
• Flexibility with high patient volume and multiple medical practices
• Regulatory adherence with precise documentation practices

Things to Keep in Mind When Implementing Practices for Effective Hospital Management Workflows

Rather than rushing through the best practices, first, it’s important to look at some important factors to get the best outcome.

• Collaborate with all the staff members and stakeholders to make a better decision

• Solve the complex problems first 

• Invest in technology when needed

• Don’t stick to the same workflow. A redesign is important to stay on top of patient care.

8 Best Practices for Effective Hospital Management With and Without Software

1. Streamline Patient Intake and Transfer Processes

If we look around, all these processes require tons of paperwork and long conversation which is time-consuming and costly.

Most importantly, it is boring for both patients and staff. 

But here is how almost 60% of the hospitals are avoiding it.

• Online patient intake: 

It is the smoothest way for patient intake because – by using just an app or software, patients can easily fill up the intake form before coming to the hospital.

This will help them avoid the waiting room hassles.

Similarly, it also eliminates the need for manual data entry for healthcare professionals which ultimately saves their time and effort.

You must also read: Online patient intake software

• Discharge planning before or during admission: 

The discharge process often gets frustrating and confusing for the patients due to the lack of planning and poor scheduling. 

But if you create the discharge plan before or during patient intake, it will help you streamline the workflows according to patients' needs.

As a result, you will be able to speed up the discharge process with less frustration.

2. Convenient Staff Scheduling

Healthcare staff scheduling is one of the critical aspects of a hospital management system. 

If you perform it poorly then the possibility is higher that your staff will not be able to provide quality care to the patients.

It will increase the employee turnover ratio, work burden, and overall operational costs.

Though there are a few steps you may need to take to streamline your healthcare staff scheduling, it is convenient to have software do that for you.

We have enlisted the steps here:

• First, analyze the staffing needs in the hospital

• Consider the skills and availability of your medical staff

• Try to avoid last-minute scheduling

• Give your team flexibility in managing their availability

• Make staff swapping less stressful

• Regularly optimize the scheduling as per the patient's needs

3. Adoption of a Patient Portal to Improve the Patient Care Experience and Satisfaction

A patient portal means – peace of mind for patients as well as the medical staff.

Because it allows patients to be involved in their care by accessing their personal health information and communicating with the healthcare professional.

On the other hand, it helps the care provider to manage all the tasks related to patients such as

• Creating profiles
• Document management
• Sending reminders

And the list goes on and on.

For a better understanding, read the entire blog on patient portal software.

4. Improve Communication in the Entire Ecosystem

Effective communication is an asset – to improve the quality of care, lower the chances of errors, and save costs.

You can easily perform it with features like internal and external team chat and automated notifications or reminders to patients.

For better understanding, let’s understand both features with real screenshots of our tech solution for hospital management.

• Internal and external team chat:

It allows users to easily communicate with both internal and external team members via chat.

But what makes it special is that the system automatically sends an email notification to the user about the message he or she received in the chat.

Moreover, the user can also reply directly from the email which automatically syncs into the software's built-in chat itself.

• Notification management system:

It gives full flexibility in creating custom SMS and email notification to patients, and internal and external team members for several events. 

To do so, you need to create a trigger for those events.

A trigger is nothing but a set of instructions for sending emails or SMS to the user.

For example, let’s assume that you set a trigger named ‘new document uploaded by the patients’. 

So when the patient uploads the new document, the software will automatically remind the internal and external team members who have permission to see it.

And it allows you to configure what to send – email or SMS with your content.

You can also manage multiple triggers through a notification management dashboard.

5. Invest in Software if You Can

If you are looking to manage every hospital practice in one place, the software is the best option for you.

We have a future-proof hospital management solution, which you can easily use for your both clinical, as well as, business operations.

Our solution contains all the most common features required for effective hospital management.

Above all, it has no-code capabilities.

Meaning, you can easily configure it as per your workflow within seconds without requiring any coding knowledge.

Talking about the pricing, well, it will give you the ultimate transparency.

Because, unlike SaaS platforms, you don’t need to pay monthly fees for our platform.

Just a one-time fee and get lifetime usage rights for unlimited users.

So, check out the top features of our HIPAA-compliant hospital management solution.

• Patient portal 
• Vendor management
• Patient document management 
• Internal and external team chat
• Online checklist maker 
• HIPAA-compliant task management tool
• Online HIPAA authorization tool
• Healthcare order status tracker 
• Order fulfillment tool
• Multi-vendor B2B marketplace
• Automatic reminders and notifications
• Purchase order approval tool
• Online purchase order generator 
• Equipment tracking tool 
• Hospital inventory management
• Real-time stock alert 
• Bulk order maker

And here is what our tech solution looks like. 

(Please note: These images are real screenshots of our solution. However, the final screens might have some differences as we customize the product as per the unique needs of each client).

For a better understanding, explore a complete guide on our solution for - hospital management software.

6. Make your Medical Documentation Faster

Medical documentation is the key component of any healthcare ecosystem.

Because it plays a significant role in both – quality care and coordination of care.

And here are the two methods you should consider to make it faster and more reliable:

A traditional method:

• Define goals of documentation

• Use bullet points

• Use speech-to-text

• Use templates and phrases

• Don’t copy-paste

• Do pre-charting

• Setting up the favorite order EHR (It saves almost 62 clicks.)

With RPA and AI:

It is a lethal combination to make medical documentation faster for the hospital management system.

Because – 

• RPA automates the process and saves up to 80% of your time

• AI algorithms help in detecting errors and identifying the risk potential

You must also read: Guide to make medical documentation faster

7. Integration is the Key

Not just healthcare management software, but any other health tech solution performs better when integrated.

Because integration eliminates the need to operate two different systems at the same time.

Confused? Let us give you an example.

If your hospital management system is integrated with the EMR/EHR – your medical staff can easily perform all the EMR/EHR-related tasks from the software itself.

This will save their time, increase operational efficiency, and lower the chances of medical errors.

However, the integration of the two health tech systems is the toughest part because both systems are not made for each other.

In other words, both come up with different functionalities and workflows.

Meaning, the chances are higher of inaccurate data transfer (which is costlier and life-threatening at the same time) if the integration is not performed well.

And this situation commonly arises when the integration is performed by non-healthcare IT professionals. Because they are not familiar with the complex clinical workflows and most importantly – interoperability standards like FHIR and HL7.

So, if you want to avoid such a mess, you must look for healthcare-specific IT experts. Because,

• They have ultimate expertise in achieving interoperability

• They add an extra layer of convenience with their compliance expertise

• They only perform health tech solutions

• They know to simplify the software workflows that perfectly fit with the medical and administrative staff needs.

8. Automate your Repetitive Tasks using RPA (Robotic Process Automation)

What if we tell you something interesting about automation?

The healthcare industry can save $13.3 billion annually, just by automating administrative tasks!

In case you don’t believe it, read the entire report here.

But what is RPA?

It is modern but accessible technology that helps in developing, deploying, and managing software robots that perform tasks just like humans.

For instance, they can do things like manual data entry and extract data – but in a much faster and more precise way than humans.

From saving time and costs to reducing life-threatening manual errors, RPA’s benefits are countless in healthcare.

And here is how it can help you create an effective hospital workflow.

• Data entry process

• Scheduling appointments

• Claim management

• Medical billing process

• Human resource management

• Regulatory compliance

• Inventory and supply chain management

Are you ready to make your hospital management ‘Work’ for you?

Flawless hospital management is the key to achieving both clinical and business goals.

Remember the more time medical staff will spend with the patients, the more you will be able to analyze, manage, and improve the patient care needs.

And adopting the new technology and integrating the existing one, are the best practices for it.