HealthManagement, Volume 24 - Issue 5, 2024
Approximately 1 in 10 patients is harmed in healthcare, with organisational and technological issues being key contributors. Improving staff coordination, safety guidelines, and automating management systems can help reduce unsafe care.
Key Points
- No healthcare setting is immune to safety incidents.
- There are four distinct root causes: organisational issues,technological issues, issues related to medical professionals and external issues.
- Hospital management software (HMS) streamlines clinical and administrative workflows.
- It is a multi-module system with functionality that varies depending on the healthcare organisation’s needs.
- It contains data aggregation and centralisation features, business, patient, and facility management, and tools for team communication and collaboration.
According to WHO estimations, although patient safety remains a priority in the healthcare industry worldwide, around 1 in every 10 patients is harmed in health care. The research also shows that organisational and technological issues are among the main factors negatively impacting patient well-being. Taking into account the type of problems leading to unsafe care, one of the ways to mitigate this issue is investing in hospital systems that improve staff coordination, help develop more effective safety guidelines, and automate patient and facility management.
Factors associated with unsafe care
Doctors swear not to harm as they step into the profession. Yet sometimes, their good intentions and professionalism are not enough to make healthcare fully safe. Currently, no healthcare setting is immune to safety incidents. Such incidents most commonly include:
- misdiagnosis,
- failure to adhere to or administer proper treatment,
- surgery-associated complications,
- infections due to prolonged hospital stays or poor injection practices,
- pressure ulcers,
- patient falls,
- patient misidentification,
- blood clotting,
- blood transfusion complications.
Factors leading to such situations vary, but the majority belong to four distinct root causes:
- Organisational issues that include staff and resource shortages within medical organisations, outdated processes and procedures, and insufficient personnel training.
- Technological issues, such as poor Internet connection, which disrupt communication between personnel and facilities, failure to access electronic health records, or troubles with medical device software.
- Issues on the side of medical professionals, like burnout, or on the patient’s side, like medical illiteracy.
- External issues, ranging from natural disasters to economic instability.
While large-scale external factors are somewhat difficult to predict and mitigate, healthcare organizations can focus on preventing the first three categories of problems. Naturally, improving patient safety calls for a complex approach that combats harmful factors at multiple levels. Still, the right choice and usage of healthcare software can make a significant difference.
How Hospital Management Software Ensures Patient Safety
Hospital management software (HMS) streamlines clinical and administrative workflows. It is usually a multi-module system with functionality that varies depending on the particular healthcare organisation’s needs. It can contain features for data aggregation and centralisation, business, patient, and facility management, as well as tools for care teams’ communication and collaboration.
The patient management module helps centralise patient data. Medical personnel or patients themselves can input information into the system via the patient portal. However, much more often, patient data enters the system through integrations with other healthcare systems such as EHR, medical CRM, medical devices, and telehealth apps. Data aggregation and centralisation allow medical professionals to get a comprehensive view of patients’ health histories, leading to more accurate diagnosis and treatment. It also helps validate patient information to avoid duplicates, misspellings, or other types of errors.
Inventory management capabilities allow healthcare organisations to track the location, quantity, and condition of medical devices and resources. This way hospital software helps businesses ensure the proper function and accessibility of resuscitation carts, single-use syringes, disinfectants, and other equipment and materials that are vital for preserving patient safety.
Each medication can be traced down from arriving at the hospital facility to being dispensed to a particular patient with the pharmacy management module. Pharmacy management systems (PMS) that are integrated with the pharmaceutical track and trace software, can even trace drugs back to the point of manufacturing. PMS lowers the chance of administering counterfeit or expired medications or fulfilling the wrong prescription. Order management functionality helps healthcare personnel monitor hospital pharmacies’ stocks and replenish them promptly. Obviously, assured availability of medications such as automatic epinephrine or adrenaline injection systems is critical for patient safety.
Healthcare organisations utilise a practice management module within the HMS system to properly allocate the workforce and distribute tasks. When medical teams have a clear view of their own and other teams’ tasks, they attend to patients according to the severity of patients’ conditions. At the same time, administrators can quickly re-distribute tasks or promptly redirect patients to other points of care in times of increased workload.
A ward management module provides a complete view of bed availability for each medical facility, including specialised units. It allows patient service teams to find appropriate patient placements for their specific care needs. Proper medical organisations’s specialisation and bed type lower the risk of medical errors and hospital-related injuries.
Hospital management software can have much more capabilities. The feature set of this type of solution can be customised depending on the particular healthcare organization’s requirements. It can also be expanded via integrations with other healthcare software applications or devices.
Common HMS integrations for Improving Patient Safety
In terms of hospital safety, the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is a very promising technology. Smart sensors constantly measure air quality, humidity, bacterial load, and other environmental metrics that have a serious impact on patients’ wellbeing and safety. Smart beds monitor patients’ body position, vital metrics, and movements, identifying the abnormal patterns that can indicate a risk of the condition deterioration, fall, or pressure ulcers. Smart resuscitation carts gather and store information about personnel’s actions during the code blue event. Hospital management software integrated with such devices helps medical personnel oversee each patient’s condition and the overall state of care facilities. Therefore, care specialists know exactly when to take preventive actions and have all the necessary information to develop more effective resuscitation procedures.
Patient engagement tools, including patient portals, or health and wellness mobile apps, integrated with hospital management software help provide patients with relevant information about their condition and their care options. They also help gather patient feedback. Properly informing patients about the care processes and procedures they must undergo lowers the risk of treatment drop-outs and consultation no-shows. At the same time, feedback aggregation ensures that medical professionals know about care gaps or patient concerns. This allows healthcare experts and decision-makers to create and implement strategies for safety improvement.
What’s Next for HMS
There are many possible ways to utilise hospital management software to improve patient safety. Still, some medical organisations don’t use their systems to their full potential. It often happens because personnel lack relevant training, or decision-makers view HMS as an unreasonably large investment.
Partnering with experienced software consultants is a good way for healthcare organisations to overcome the above-mentioned barriers. Software experts can provide training sessions, suggest software customisations and configurations that cover the organisation's patient safety needs, and support the entire implementation process while keeping it within budget limits.
Conflict of Interest
None.