Do you know how much money is flowing in and out of your hospital? Do you know where the expenses are coming from or where profits are going to?
The cash flow is the lifeline of any business. A hospital's financial situation can be difficult to manage because it has many different revenue streams and expenses. The use of hospital management software (HMS) has a direct impact on the hospital's ability to improve cash flow and patient satisfaction. This blog post will talk about improving cash flow and patient satisfaction through implementing hospital management software.
Good cash flow management can help hospitals stay afloat when money becomes tight. It includes understanding what expenses come in each month and where they go after they're paid for. This can be achieved by maintaining proper accounting, reporting, audit trails, etc. Let us look into how HMS helps to understand this through its features.
Integration of all workflow
With the help of HMS, all the work happening in the hospital converges to a single point where you can access data to study the cash flow pattern in each and every department separately and also the hospital as a whole. This makes it easier to understand the cash flow patterns in all departments.
For example, understanding there are more expenses at a certain department than any other and also generates fewer profits would make a person realize how much time can be saved if money is shifted from one field of work to another which in turn improves the cash flow for both departments.
Hospital management software (HMS) makes this possible with the ability to integrate with financial auditing ERP systems. For example, your hospital may be using any of the systems like Tally ERP, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft GP, Focus ERP, etc. HMS will be able to easily integrate with these enabling the overall management of the hospital including financial management.
Managing all billings in one place
Billing will have its own section on how many claims get processed each month and what amount comes in and leaves, what are the expenses incurred in each month, what is the amount of direct cash coming in from patients, etc.
Without HMS the billings in each section would need to be kept separately, for example, separate billing for laboratory, x-rays, etc, but with the help of HMS, all of this can be maintained in a single place. Making it easier to track and analyze as well as easier for patients to pay their bills at a single point.
In the case of sponsor billing and claims management, it becomes much easier for keeping things transparent with the help of HMS. The breakdown of the total billing can be easily obtained for each and every service offered from different departments which gives the sponsors or insurance companies much more clarity and credibility.
Inventory Management Modules
This feature helps to reduce the wastage of resources and also saves unnecessary expenditure. An example would be, if a hospital is running out of IV fluids, without having to call up suppliers they can place an order for more through HMS software. Similarly, since all of the inventories are managed in one place for the entire hospital it is easy to learn and improve the cash flow.
It helps to optimize inventory management by establishing good order controls, forecasting future demands, setting up reorder levels based on the forecasts and present usage levels, and also enabling just-in-time purchases. This ensures that the hospital is never out of essential while providing the best care for patients.
Revenue cycle management features
Since cash credit billing, packages, rate and discount management, credit notes, deposits, claim submissions are all managed through the single portal the reports from them are consolidated and will include all the necessary data to analyze the amount collected through insurances, the amount pending, in transit and the worth of rejected claims. This information will largely help to improve your cash flow.
Accounts management
Insta offers Reporting Tools that ensure the proper management of billing, revenue, collection, and tallying them. For example, the Day Book Report ensures tallying of cash boxes for collections with the collection reports.
Proper audit trails are the key to improving cash flow as it ensures that there is zero revenue leakage. Each bill created, rate modifications, discounts, etc are tracked and this transparency ensures accountability amongst all staff.
Improve patient satisfaction
The features of HMS also help in improving patient satisfaction with its EMR, online bookings, and error-free billing processes. For example, it becomes easier to find out what insurance plans a hospital is registered for by accessing this information through one centralized location that updates automatically as registrations change over time.
The payment process is also made easy for patients as the HMS integrates with EDC machines like Pinelabs, Salucro Payments, etc. Patients don’t have to make large payments in cash and they can make their payments through wallets, debit or credit cards, or even UPI.
When cash flow patterns are improved, the hospital can allocate more time and investment to improve facilities and features to improve patient satisfaction. Besides this, the streamlined workflow, easy access to patient history, well-managed scheduling, and billing achieved through HMS, all help to increase the quality of care provided which ultimately leads to patient satisfaction.
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