An Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system for healthcare integrates financial accounting; human capital and resource management; materials management; and decision support – empowering leaders to make data-wise decisions. Better operational efficiency and financial control positively impacts staff retention and patient care.
Enterprise Resource Planning systems help healthcare organizations to manage their resources more efficiently. This may include:
- Tracking patient care data
- Managing hospital supplies inventory
- Improving staff retention
- Organizing financial information
The application of ERP systems is broad and incredibly useful for synthesizing large data blocks and keeping different sorts of data organized in one location.
For community hospitals that need to stretch each dollar to its limit, ERP systems help streamline operations and improve communication between different departments and healthcare systems.
Here are the key benefits of healthcare ERP systems for community hospitals.
Better Patient Care
Patient care is directly impacted by the availability of a medical facility’s resources, such as surgical supplies or specific machinery. Indirectly, it can also be affected by staff and human resources pertaining to the scheduling of personnel, availability of staff, and management functions that allow the organization to continue operating.
An ERP provides a centralized location to provide different departments with patient registration and charge data. Information can be added and retrieved from different locations by different staff levels.
Most importantly, the updates occur in real-time and the information is presented in crystal-clear formats, streamlining communication across departments and reducing the chance of errors or redundant orders.
Reduced Costs
ERP software is rooted in financial planning principles and methods. Complex financial data is constantly updated and can be accessed at any time in the form of simple and useful graphs and lists.
Healthcare teams use ERP systems to monitor budgets and track revenue and expenses. Additionally, the streamlined cross-department data sharing enabled by ERP software saves costs by reducing the incidences of duplicate purchases, tests, and procedures.
Streamlined Communication Across Departments and Systems
Information sharing is an ongoing challenge for any healthcare team. For community healthcare systems, employees are often asked to regularly transmit data between many small teams and across various software systems.
An ERP system streamlines data sharing within an organization and across different organizations. Information is easily moved in and out of a central shared source and clearly presented in a manner that’s easy to digest and share.
Better Decision Making by Providers and Administrators
Healthcare providers make high-stakes decisions every day. It’s critical that providers are always equipped with patient data that’s up-to-date, easily accessed, and clearly presented.
A healthcare Enterprise Resource Planning system is the tool that achieves these objectives by making it easy for different departments and staff levels to move information in and out of a shared data resource.
The same ERP features that help care providers also equip administrators to make better management decisions. Access to clear and current data enables decision-makers to optimize budgets, improve staff scheduling, and plan for the organization’s financial future.
Improved Accountability for Staff
ERP systems transform enormous amounts of data into easy-to-read tables and figures. This includes information related to the scheduling and performance of hospital staff.
Not all aspects of an employee’s performance can be translated into objective data points. However, it’s incredibly valuable to view the patterns, outlying statistics, and average performance metrics related to staff performance.
These data points may include items like time spent to complete certain tasks, patient satisfaction survey results, or stats related to hours worked, such as lateness instances or overtime hours worked.
Employee performance data can be used to establish benchmarks, target the performance areas that need improvement, and evaluate staff for bonuses and promotions.
Get an Enterprise Resource Planning System for Your Community Hospital
Harris Integrative is a leading innovator of healthcare accounting and Enterprise Resource Planning systems. We provide ERP tools tailored to the unique needs of community healthcare systems.
We understand that community hospital teams face difficult decisions related to maintaining ERP software systems that are affordable, effective, and a good fit for the organization’s size and personnel.
Our practice management solutions help administrators take on these challenges by improving technical and administrative functions like care coordination, billing, and reporting.
To discuss our services or request a demo, schedule a 15-minute call with the Harris Integrative team today.
To learn more about the ways that Harris Integrative helps healthcare teams improve their operations and data management, visit our blog.
