Last Updated | September 3, 2024
The global hospital management software market is valued at $57.47 billion as of 2024. It is projected to increase to $80.43 billion by 2029, almost doubling in size. This is a testament to the importance and potential of hospital management software.
While the title is “How to Make Hospital Management Software,” this article covers all essential aspects of hospital management software development. Readers will find all essential bases covered and healthcare organizations can use this guide to plan their hospital management software implementation.
The Growing Need for Hospital Management Software
As the number of patients increases, so does the related data and the need to store and maintain it. Managing large volumes of patient data effectively is a crucial driver of hospital management software market growth.
The best hospital management software (HMS) streamlines major hospital workflows. Many hospitals consider hospital management system development because it offers end-to-end support for all departments. Another reason large hospitals are adopting HMS is its flexibility. It can perform various functions and accommodate as many modules as hospitals require.
Essential Modules for Hospital Management Software
Today, it is crucial for every hospital to have the best hospital management system software with robust functionality to improve efficiency and effectively handle the increasing number of patients. These 12 essential modules will help you determine what to consider for your hospital management software.
Before developing your HMS, familiarize yourself with these essential hospital management system modules:
- Patient Management
- Appointment Scheduling
- Billing and Invoicing
- Inventory Management
- Pharmacy Management
- Laboratory Management
- Radiology Management
- Electronic Medical Records (EMR)
- Human Resource Management
- Financial Management
- Reporting and Analytics
- Patient Portal
By incorporating these essential hospital management system modules, the best hospital management software will be well-equipped to streamline operations, enhance patient care, and drive growth in the face of increasing patient volumes and data.
How Does Hospital Management Software Work?
Hospital patient management software manages the entire hospital and streamlines all operations. It handles medical, administrative, financial, legal, and compliance matters.
Consider it a computerized healthcare maintenance management system (CMMS) software that helps manage assets, track maintenance costs, and generate reports for HIPAA compliance audit costs. HMS manages all aspects of a hospital’s operations. The hospital management application integrates everything from patient check-ins, appointments, and health records to insurance policies, billing, and emergency care.
There are many standards available for exchanging data. If you want to go with international standards, you can use HL7 data integration and FHIR or any data integration solutions for healthcare. Another option for sharing data, especially patient data, is to use HL7 messages.
When you are looking for hospital management software companies to work with, you must consider the software you choose is capable of:
- Quickly retrieving patient information
- Staff pre-scheduling
- Perfectly managing accounting and billing
- Tracking lab equipment
- Managing inventory and a lot more.
Best Hospital Management Software Features
Advanced hospital management software development is built with many capabilities and features. They are integrated systems that automate most hospital operations and streamline management, bringing together clinicians, nurses, patients, and other medical staff. To function this way, hospital management software must feature capabilities including, but not limited to:
Appointment Scheduling with Hospital Management Software
Hospital software must ensure smooth patient onboarding, which is possible with hassle-free appointments. A hospital patient management system helps book appointments quickly and easily, making it especially useful during emergencies.
It also keeps physicians, radiologists, and patients on the same page, allowing them to make appointments according to availability. Your hospital software must have this feature in both online and offline modes to avoid delays, even during internet glitches.
Patient Management via Portal
Using a white-labeled patient portal with an online mode can help you engage patients and gain access to their reports, appointments, and check-ups quickly. Thus, you must get a portal added to your software.
But what happens when you need to share feedback with other practitioners? Well, this portal works for that, too! It allows you to easily share input, access, and patient information with your colleagues.
Lab Management with Hospital Management Software
Before technological advancements, transparency in pathology management was a far-fetched idea. The integrated lab management feature is an example of advanced technology.
It takes care of all pathological requirements, records and analyzes whatever pathological process your clinic performs, and provides past and future reports.
Through this portal, you can also track and monitor other processes, such as medical, commercial, and special laboratory operations. Whether you have an inpatient or outpatient facility, you can use this portal to generate billing directly.
When unsure about a report’s authenticity, the portal also has an updated list of authorized personnel responsible for checking it.
How to Make Hospital Management Software with 12 Essential Modules?
Hospitals need hospital management software solutions that contain the essential modules for complex healthcare workflow management. The number of hospital management system modules varies in the software, so in most cases, you can develop your software by adding the modules you need or subtracting the ones you do not need.
For handling complex workflows, make sure your software has the following 12 essential modules:
1. Patient Registration and Electronic Health Records (EHR)
Every hospital management system must have a patient registration module to simplify the process. Adding functionality that provides quick options for patient registration is enough. Using this module, receptionists can quickly add all necessary details about a patient to the system to enhance the patient experience with hospital software systems.
This information is stored in the patient’s electronic health records (EHR). Later, doctors and nurses can access these records to check details and add more information about a patient’s health, treatment, and medication.
If your software is open to third-party EHR system integration, you can connect it with the top two EHR systems: Cerner or Epic. These EHRs have their own features and work for different clinical facilities. Thus, by learning about Cerner vs. Epic’s pros and cons, you can easily distinguish between both EHRs and choose the one that includes the functions your hospital needs.
2. Billing and Payment Processing
Billing and payment processing is the most critical part of a hospital management system. Thus, it is another essential module to consider adding to your hospital management system. You must look for a billing module that offers fantastic reporting to manage cash flow and payment processing time speed.
The module allows you to set up variable-rate plans, create bills, take payments, and issue printed bills and receipts.
Once you get this module integrated into your systems, you will have the following:
- Safe and secure billing and reporting
- No loss of data and bills
- Reports to track revenue and payer performance
3. Appointment and Reception Management with Hospital Management Software
Hospitals regularly serve hundreds of patients and their visitors. Managing these patients and visitors through a paper-based system in the reception area is tedious and insecure.
If your hospital staff takes too long to book appointments and manage visitor check-ins, this can result in long waiting hours and a poor patient experience. Hospital management software with appointment and reception management modules is one way to manage this task efficiently. It replaces paper registers and semi-automated systems with a secure, paperless system that ensures operational productiveness and security.
Advancements in this module enable a contactless visitor check-in experience. It captures information quickly and records every check-in along with visitor contact details. If you still use traditional appointment methods, you must know how they prevent patients from moving comfortably through their visits and visits.
This software module replaces those old appointment methods and enables patients to book appointments in advance. Additionally, the software helps avoid overcrowding by allowing patients to make appointments through mobile phones and check themselves in upon their arrival in the hospital without any interaction with the hospital staff (of course, the software will notify your staff as patients check-in).
4. Laboratory and Tests Management
Laboratory and test management systems are usually integrated with other modules. They show a particular patient’s lab test results and often reconcile them with their EHRs. The reports and results they generate can only be seen by authorized users (i.e., clinical staff).
Most medical software development services offer this module within the hospital management software for better functionality. Some vendors may also integrate lab modules with medical diagnostic systems to record and maintain details of various diagnostic tests conducted on patients.
The module also allows users to email reports directly to patients and send them to doctors for quick review. These capabilities may vary with different vendors, so you must check with the vendor (you choose) to learn about any other functionalities the module may have.
5. Inventory Management
Tracking the amount of medication and the number of items in stock is essential to control the availability of medical materials. Your staff can use this feature to track supplies before they run out and estimate the time for the next delivery. It also helps monitor medication expiration dates.
Having this program in the software will help you automatically track the materials required during the procedures. It will maintain material flow and ensure supplies are always available in advance.
6. Finance and Accounting
Managing finances and accounting involves monitoring financial transactions, including accounts, costs, and taxes. The finance and accounting module can do it all for you. This module can also automate the calculation of the total price for hospital services and record patient payment history.
At the same time, it can provide patients with a list of prices for different services before they make payment. This financial management module’s benefit is the automatic analysis of the hospital’s economic situation and the reports used to prepare a strategy to improve it.
7. Insurance Services Integration with Hospital Management Software
Integrating the insurance module with the rest of the management system modules can simplify insurance management. Medical device integration companies can help you connect the module with a third party that offers insurance services so that this integration can take place.
The insurance module can help you record and store insurance details for every patient. These details include insurance policy numbers, the insurance company, and relevant policy information.
Since this information will be stored in the hospital management software, your staff could quickly check patient insurance policies. You can also allow patients to manage their payments and policies by giving access to patients.
8. Treatment Plans Management
Treatment plan management allows doctors to select a treatment plan (from standard plans) or develop it based on several protocols. This module of the hospital management software can advise you on how to examine and treat patients effectively by creating the right treatment plans.
When you integrate this program with your HMS, make sure it can compare medical examinations and treatment plans prescribed by doctors against the potential outcomes for the patient. This way, you can ensure your developed plan will bring the desired outcomes.
9. Remote Patient Monitoring
Clinicians need a way to interact with patients remotely to monitor their medication intake when they cannot come in.
Therefore, the remote patient monitoring module must be integrated with the hospital management software. The remote monitoring module helps doctors in many ways:
- Informs about medication contraindications
- Gathers basic information about patients’ health conditions from their wearable devices
- It helps connect with patients and learn about their well-being wherever they are.
10. Telemedicine and Hospital Management Software
Telemedicine is similar to remote patient monitoring, but telemedicine software for healthcare providers is a more advanced system. It enables comprehensive care delivery through electronic media.
With this module in your hospital system, your practice can offer services to long-distance patients and significantly add value to them. Telemedicine software vendors charge separately for telemedicine startup costs. So, you must tell the vendor how much you must invest to get the module in your management software.
Nevertheless, investing in the module now will yield a long-term ROI (return on investment). With the telemedicine module, you can connect more directly with patients, understand their health problems on a more personal level, and thus develop more accurate treatment plans.
This will help you improve the patient experience with your hospital, giving them a reason to turn to you whenever their health declines. They may also spread word of mouth to promote your telemedicine services.
11. Emergency Care Module
An emergency care module is an essential solution for a hospital. When patients are brought in for an emergency, there is little time to gather their data.
This module is a great help in dealing with such emergencies. It provides detailed pre-configured sections to fill out information relevant to emergency patients, which includes:
- Pulse
- Blood Pressure
- CB Glucose
- O2 Saturation %
It also has detailed sections that add information about the method of arrival, place of incident, estimated date and time, mechanism of injury, and much more.
This module can help your clinical staff quickly enter data, which clinicians can then view and use for legal purposes.
12. Pharmacy Management
One last module you need to add to your software is pharmacy management. This program is essential in the HMS to monitor the expiration dates of medicines in stock.
Also, this program should have a control module that helps plan and manage drug and product delivery. This module can keep the pharmacy integrated with your hospital, and you can manage your drugs and medication internally without connecting to an external pharmacy.
What are the Requirements For A Hospital Management System?
You need to decide what functions you want hospital management software to perform to ensure that it serves your best interests.
Your needs will differ from those of other healthcare facilities, so you must develop your list of requirements and what you expect from your software. Then, you can communicate the requirements to the software vendor.
In addition to your list, consider adding a few more requirements such as:
Staff Management
Of course, the requirements list for the hospital management system is incomplete without a staff management feature. This capability helps organize employees around work and monitor several processes in the hospital.
Check-ins and Check-out
Make sure the software you get developed for your hospital has a portal where patients and hospital staff can handle their check-ins and check-outs.
Treatment Management
Treatment management helps clinicians manage patient information to carry out treatments on time. You must look for the software that provides treatment management along with options for:
- Maintaining a treatment plan
- Managing analysis and prescriptions
- Storing data and monitoring patient medical history
5 Key Benefits of Making Hospital Management Software
Hospital management software has many perks. It is an integrated system that streamlines every hospital management process. From registering patients to billing and providing them with remote care, the software has a separate module for each process.
Overall, this technology is significant in medical facilities, where it manages all processes, allowing facilities to go paperless. The software will provide these five key benefits no matter what specialty hospital you run.
Access to Electronic Health Records On-the-go
The HMS system maintains documents and health data online, allowing easy access to electronic health records (EHR) anytime and streamlining most hospital operations.
Fast Reimbursement Processing
The software manages reimbursements electronically with the integrated billing, payment, finance, and accounting modules. It reduces paperwork and lets your staff easily search through patient EHRs and other digital reports to find remittances, insurance information, and claim advice. Thus, the software makes it easy to process patient reimbursement.
Fix and Reduce Mistakes
Since hospital management software is an integrated system, they also have the modules to perform insurance and billing processes. With such modules up and running, your staff only needs to update patient billing information regularly, and the software itself corrects and updates the mistakes in the data.
Save Time for Staff
This software is designed to increase efficiency in medical practices and improve processes that are part of their everyday operations. It is responsible for performing several tasks related to collecting information and verifying documents. This way, it performs many functions that otherwise medical staff needs to handle, saving them enough time to focus on more complex tasks.
Strategic Development
Hospitals find it challenging to see long-term progress and navigate the administrative workflow without a proper management system. As a centralized location for handling processes, this software helps manage and direct the business processes of the entire hospital. The system is also helpful for implementing strategic decisions to boost the business’s efficiency and profits.
The Essential Steps in Hospital Management Software Development
Hospital management software development is pivotal for healthcare organizations that want to streamline the entire business. This section expands on the five essential steps in hospital management software development:
Needs and Requirements Assessment
- Identifying and involving essential personnel, i.e., administrators, doctors, nurses, and patients, to understand their needs.
- Clearly outline the software’s goals and objectives, such as improving patient care, streamlining administrative tasks, or enhancing financial management.
- Gathering requirements and creating comprehensive lists of features, functionalities, and data points.
System Architecture and Design
- Use effective database design to create a robust database structure to store patient data. This includes patient medical records, appointments, billing information, etc.
- Work on user interface (UI) design and develop a user-friendly and intuitive interface with easy navigation.
- Take the time to design system architecture and determine the overall structure of the software, including hardware, software components, and network requirements.
Coding and Development
- Choose a technology stack, i.e., suitable programming languages and frameworks. The development team should use tools ideal for healthcare applications that meet security standards.
- Coders must write clean, efficient, well-documented code when implementing the defined functionalities.
- Conduct rigorous testing to find and fix bugs or errors before deploying the program.
Customization and Integration
- Integrating with existing systems ensures seamless integration with other healthcare systems, such as electronic health records (EHRs), laboratory information systems (LIS), and radiology information systems (RIS).
- Customizing the software to meet the hospital’s needs while considering factors like workflows, policies, and regulations.
Implementation and Training
- An effective deployment includes installing and configuring the software in a hospital’s IT infrastructure.
- Comprehensive training sessions for healthcare staff on how to effectively use the software.
- Ongoing support and maintenance services addressing issues or requests for enhancements.
Hospital Management Software Development with Folio3 Digital Health
Consider hospital management software development if you want to improve operational efficiency for doctors, healthcare staff, and patients. The Folio3 digital health team will also work with you from ideation to deployment and post-deployment support.
Every Folio3 Digital Health product is HIPAA-compliant and uses the latest HL7 and FHIR interoperability standards. Our team of experienced developers, designers, and marketers ensures a seamless experience for healthcare organizations that want to improve their workflows.
Hospital Management Software Development – The Bottom Line
Hospital management software can handle many patients and their data, potentially meeting patients’ needs and boosting the efficiency of clinical staff. They are high-quality, practical solutions that reduce paperwork and improve medical documents’ quality and informational content —that’s why they are becoming so popular.
If you are still deciding whether to adopt this software, it is high time you choose. You must make the most of this emerging technology to automate your clinical administrative operations. It will help you minimize waiting times when registering patients and improve your services’ overall experience.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Much Does Hospital Management Software Cost?
The cost of hospital management software ranges from $15,000 to $70,000. This range depends on the size of the hospital, the number of beds, the departments, and many other factors.
For small practices, it costs less.
Since a hospital grows and the number of beds increases, it needs an upgradeable software system. Such software has a high capacity, and thus, its cost is higher than a non-upgradable one.
How Do You Make Hospital Management Software?
To make a hospital management software, three things need to be in place:
Modules
The software consists of modules. There are lots of modules used in daily clinical operations. A hospital can add modules based on its staff needs, such as:
- Doctors work with electronic health records of patients (here, EHRs are modules)
- Receptionists use finance management and patient registration modules.
- Clinical laboratories interact with the modules that store patient examinations, test results, etc.
Catalogs and Protocols
Hospital management software requires all the essential data, such as internal clinical protocols and standards, to manage care delivery and hospital administration.
Reports and Dashboards
The management software must have an interactive healthcare UX design with administrative and medical dashboards and reports. These reports allow hospitals to analyze the efficiency of their services and gain insight into areas for improvement.
Do Cerner, Allscripts, and Epic offer HIPAA-compliant services?
Every medical software dealing with patient personal data must comply with HIPAA law. However, not all healthcare app development services provide HIPAA compliance software development. Cerner, Allscripts, and Epic are top EHR software providers. Compliance is as essential for them as for any other software.
Let’s learn which of these EHR software makes sure to stay HIPAA compliant:
Cerner
Cerner HL7 integration uses a third-party healthcare compliance company to stay HIPAA compliant and help healthcare practices meet HIPAA compliance standards.
Allscripts EHR Integration
A few years ago, Allscripts EHR integration did not comply with HIPAA. After the violation, it had to propose a massive settlement to resolve the allegations. Its compliance with HIPAA is still a question.
Epic
Epic EHR integration health care is HIPAA compliant. Whether clinicians use Epic EHR software on desktop, mobile, or web browsers, it keeps the data secure.
What Is the Best Hospital Management Software in the World?
Popular options include Cerner, Epic, and Meditech. Each software has pros and cons that different healthcare providers can consider.
How to Make Hospital Management System Software?
Building hospital management system software requires these components:
- Clearly defined requirements
- Thoroughly designed software architecture
- Building the software from scratch
- Testing the software in real-world settings
- Software implementation and maintenance
What Is a Small Hospital Management Software?
It is a system designed for smaller hospitals with limited resources. It offers essential features and is often more affordable than larger-scale systems.
What Is the Top Hospital Management Software?
The top hospital management software exists since choices depend on size, budget, and custom requirements. The most common options include:
- Cerner
- Meditech
- Athenahealth
- NextGen Healthcare
- Allscripts
- GE Healthcare
- McKesson
About the Author
Naqqash Khan
As a seasoned .NET Developer, I am dedicated to creating innovative digital health solutions that improve patient outcomes and streamline healthcare processes. Working in the Digital Health division of Folio3, I have a wealth of experience utilizing the latest technologies to craft highly scalable, HIPAA-compliant, and secure software systems. My experience includes developing web and mobile applications, implementing RESTful APIs, and utilizing cloud computing technologies such as AWS/Azure for scalable and secure data storage and processing. If you're looking for a professional who can turn your digital health vision into a reality, connect with me to discuss how we can work together to revolutionize healthcare through technology.
