Benefits of Hospital Management System: Cost and development guide

This blog will discuss the benefits of hospital management system, the average cost of the software, and how to develop it step-by-step.

Do you also find it challenging to keep your high-end hospital operations running smoothly? The healthcare industry is a place where precision and efficiency are paramount. Therefore, the need for streamlined processes has never been more urgent. Hospital management systems (HMS) have emerged as a unicorn over time, providing the digital backbone to healthcare facilities. They help automate and streamline tasks, optimize patient care, and increase efficiency. However, along with the benefits of hospital management system, cost is one of the first considerations that comes to mind when thinking about this system.

In this blog, we will explore the benefits of hospital management system, step by step, in building a successful system and the cost of building HMS.

I. Introduction: Unveiling the Benefits of Hospital Management System

1. Enhanced communication between the patient and the hospital

One of the key benefits of hospital management system is improved communication between patients and healthcare providers. Studies show that 59% of Millennials are willing to train their doctors for better online access. HMS will improve patient-hospital communication by allowing patients to access their medical records, schedule appointments, set reminders, and communicate online with their doctors and nurses. You will improve patient engagement, reduce queue times, and increase patient satisfaction.

2. Secured hospital data

Hospital management software helps providers keep their data and medical records safe and secure. Organizations can limit access to authorized personnel only. Make sure to look for HIPAA-compliant software to keep PHI secure.

3. Improved access to patient data

One of the major benefits of hospital management system is enhanced ability to access patient information. With just a few clicks, healthcare providers can retrieve patient histories, attending physician details, test results, billing records, and other critical data, leading to more efficient and informed decision-making.

4. Reduced turnaround time

Hospital management systems streamline hospital workflows by automating routine tasks such as appointment scheduling or inventory management. This improves the time and effort required to perform these tasks and the turnaround time. It also allows hospital staff to focus on more important patient care areas.

5. Cost-effectiveness

Cost reduction is one of the most significant benefits of the hospital management system. It helps reduce administrative costs, improve resource allocation, and minimize the waste of medical supplies by automating administrative tasks. A good HMS can also help hospitals optimize revenue streams by ensuring timely payments and reducing claim denials.

6. Intelligent analytics with automatically generated reports

HMS can provide valuable operational insights by generating real-time reports on various metrics. These include patient flow, occupancy rates, and revenue generation. These benefits of hospital management systems allow hospitals to make data-driven decisions, improve processes, and optimize resources.

7. Centralized administrative control

One overlooked benefit of a hospital management system is centralized administrative control. It helps hospitals build a centralized platform for managing operating funds to optimize and streamline administrative processes. It ensures consistency across departments. This can improve efficiency, reduce errors, and improve patient care.

8. Reduced medical errors

Reducing clinical and medical errors is one of the most important benefits of hospital management system. It can help reduce the risk of misdiagnosis, incorrect treatment, or harmful drug interactions by providing real-time patient data.

9. Reduced readmissions and rehospitalization rates

Another crucial benefit of a hospital management system is its ability to track patient recovery and ensure timely follow-ups. This improves patient outcomes and reduces the risk of future complications. To understand how a hospital management system can be effective for a hospital.

II. Additional advantages of Hospital Management System software

The benefits of hospital management systems are multifaceted and contribute significantly to the efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of healthcare delivery. Some additional advantages include:

Streamlined Operations

An important added benefit of a hospital management system is that it allows hospitals to automate administrative tasks. These include appointment scheduling, patient registration, billing, and inventory management. This helps streamline workflows and reduces errors caused by manual work and paperwork.

Enhanced Patient Care

Features like electronic health records (EHR) and clinical support systems provide healthcare providers with comprehensive patient information. This allows personalized treatment planning, timely interventions, and improved patient outcomes. This convenience makes it one of the most impactful benefits of implementing a hospital management system.

Improved communication

HMS facilitates seamless communication between healthcare professionals, allowing real-time access to patient data, sharing of medical records, and collaboration across departments, leading to better coordination and continuity of care.

Efficient use of resources

The system now helps optimize resource allocation, track medical supplies, and manage staff schedules. This helps healthcare facilities maximize efficiency, minimize waste, and reduce operating costs.

Better compliance and reporting

HMS ensures compliance with regulatory requirements, accreditation standards, and industry guidelines by automating documentation, generating accurate reports, and facilitating audits, minimizing risk, and ensuring accountability.

Enhanced Patient Experience

Through features such as online appointment scheduling, patient portals, and telemedicine capabilities, HMS provides convenience, accessibility, and engagement, enhancing the overall patient experience and satisfaction.

Data-Driven Decision-Making

By providing actionable insights through analytics and reporting tools, HMS enables data-driven decision-making, performance tracking, and strategic planning, empowering healthcare administrators to optimize processes and allocate resources efficiently.

Scalability and Flexibility

HMS solutions are scalable and adaptable to the changing needs of healthcare facilities. Thus, it allows healthcare providers to integrate with existing systems seamlessly. At the same time, customize based on specific requirements and expand to accommodate growth.

Overall, the benefits of hospital management systems go beyond improving your operational efficiency. It also includes improved patient care, regulatory compliance, and strategic decision-making. These benefits and advantages make it an indispensable tool for modern healthcare organizations.

III. Hospital management software development costs breakdown

Aside from the benefits of hospital management system, businesses are most concerned about the cost of developing this system. In this section, it is time for us to analyze the cost of the final product that you may have to pay:

A basic or simple hospital management system usually has an average development cost of $20,000 to $70,000. This cost includes a basic, simple but effective interface. There are also basic features such as patient management, appointment scheduling, and billing.

The hospital management system is of average complexity; the price to develop is around $50,000 to $100,000. This system will have advanced features like telemedicine integration, EHR, and analytics functions.

For enterprise-level HMS that require a higher level of functionality, the cost of a large-scale hospital management project can range from $100,000 to $500,000 or more. This system includes a more complex user interface, custom workflows, data security features, and advanced automation support.

Additionally, subscription-based hospital management software typically costs between $500 and $3,000. The cost will depend on the requirements or if the business needs customization.

For outsourcing IT staff to develop a hospital management system, The cost of hiring an hourly software developer from Asia and Eastern Europe can range from $25 to $50/hour. While in North America and Western Europe, the cost can range from $50 to $150/hour.

The abovementioned costs are just estimates, as many factors influence the final development cost. However, this does not mean creating a hospital management software product that costs significantly more or less is impossible. It depends on the level of quality that the product and software development team expects from the HMS application.

Besides the development costs, remember that you will still have to pay for software updates, server maintenance, and training after launching the product.

In short, the cost of developing a hospital management system can vary greatly depending on many factors. To save costs, you should work with an experienced software development company to determine the project’s scope and requirements and create a budget that fits your needs and goals.

IV. How to build a hospital management system in 8 steps

Step 1. Conduct market research

The first step is to conduct market research. However, it is essential to thoroughly examine the market to ensure that your idea meets current user needs and can attract customers and generate revenue.

Market research also helps you identify areas lacking services and decide which features to focus on to stand out. Here are the main steps to take when conducting market research:

You can identify common challenges in healthcare facilities by studying industry reports and surveys. These challenges may include issues related to tasks such as managing hospital information systems, patient care, administrative tasks, billing, or communication.

Next, research the needs of users, healthcare providers, administrators, and patients. Understanding these needs helps you identify pain points and areas where solutions fall short. This allows you to set goals to address these gaps. You can use industry metrics reports, social media, and professional forums. You can also conduct surveys and user interviews.

Finally, it analyzes the competition of hospital management systems available in the market. Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. You can develop unique features that are not available in the market or advanced features that contribute to creating a hospital management system that can perform better.

Step 2. Consider development challenges

The next step is to consider the development challenges. Developing any software comes with its own set of challenges. However, developing hospital management software comes with specific challenges unique to the healthcare industry. Therefore, you need to consider these challenges during the planning phase:

• HIPAA Compliance: The first important thing you need to consider is compliance with HIPAA regulations. HIPAA governs the protection of patient data and requires developers to implement complex data privacy and security measures.
• Data Integration: Hospital management software must always exchange data between different systems. Some of them may use legacy and proprietary technologies. Therefore, managing and standardizing this data is a complex task.
• Usability and User Adoption: Healthcare professionals or doctors always have busy schedules. Therefore, they always have limited time for training and guidance. Making medical software as intuitive as possible is important to suit them.
• Integrating clinical decision support (CDS) tools is also a big challenge because of the complexity of medical knowledge and the variability of clinical activities.
• Scalability: As healthcare facilities grow, they must scale their software to accommodate increased data volumes and meet user needs.

Step 3. Choose the right type of hospital management system

Before discussing how to develop a hospital management system, let’s find out what types of hospital software are available in the market.

Based on the functions performed by HMS, such digital solutions are divided into the following categories:

• Administrative systems store and process information: This system helps store and process patient medical records, such as medical history, treatments, and medications, with doctors.
• Operation and tactical systems are created to avoid any inconsistencies in medical data throughout the system. All information is clearly classified, structured, and interoperable at all healthcare facility levels. Different departments can access different healthcare records based on their user status.
• Task-based systems allow healthcare organizations to assign tasks to appropriate staff and control their execution. Hospital administrators use software to manage staff tasks and monitor hospital operations.
• Subject-based systems help healthcare providers reduce paperwork by converting patient paper documents into Electronic Health Records (EHR) or Electronic Medical Records (EMR).
• Financial and billing systems platforms process patient treatment records and send them to their insurance companies to expedite payment.

Step 4. Select the required functionality

At this stage, you must choose the features you need for your hospital management system. While you can add all the features at once, practical limitations make this infeasible. Such as investor commitments, the need to launch quickly to capture the market at the right time, budget constraints, and other factors that may limit your ability. Therefore, you need to prioritize the essential features that serve the core purpose of the hospital management system. Additionally, you can help your system stand out from the competition by adding advanced features.

Now, let’s look at the basic features of a hospital management system:

• Patient registration: Regardless of the system, including the hospital management system, it must allow doctors to register new patients and enter their relevant information.
• Electronic health records (EHR): This can be thought of as a patient health chart. It provides important data, including medical history, x-rays, treatment plans, allergies, lab and test results, and prescription medications.
• Appointment and scheduling functionality: Your system should allow healthcare providers or physicians to schedule and manage appointments. It is best to have the ability to notify patients via phone or email.
• Billing and finance modules: These allow hospital administrators to review financial documents and manage financial activities, such as taxes, assessments, and patient billing.
• Physician profiles: These allow patients to view a list of physicians available at the facility, as well as their schedules, experience, and accomplishments.
• Inventory management: This feature allows healthcare providers to track the flow of medical supplies and equipment such as masks, emergency blankets, thermometers, and first aid kits.
• Laboratory management: This feature allows both patients and doctors to be quickly notified of test results. In addition, authorized professionals can retrieve these results at any time.
• Statistics and reporting provide managers with valuable insights to develop their healthcare facilities and improve the quality of their services.
• Pharmacy management. This feature allows healthcare workers to track the expiry date of drugs in stock and plan drug deliveries.
• Statistics and reporting. It provides managers with valuable insights to develop their healthcare facilities and improve the quality of their services.

Finally, there is integration with insurance services. This feature allows the recording and storage of patient insurance details. It includes the policy number, insurance company name, and key policy information. This makes it easier for patients to manage their policies and payments.

Step 5. Consider the design

User interface (UI) and user experience (UX) are more important to the success of a hospital management system than other digital products. HMSs serves a wide range of users, each with their own preferences and needs. In addition, the level of digital expertise, ability to use software, and willingness to learn new software can vary greatly among these user groups. Therefore, you need to design an interface that is user-friendly and usable by anyone.

So, to help you meet the diverse needs of your target audience, our UX/UI design team has come up with some useful tips:

• Understand how the healthcare industry works: Healthcare is one of the most complex industries because it has many different regulations from country to country. So, before you start developing a hospital management system, you need to clearly understand how patients access care and how healthcare organizations deliver it. This understanding can help you create the right user flow and functionality for your system.
• Make sure your UI/UX design fits the user’s environment: To create a hospital management system that will retain users and bring you steady profits, you must ensure your design fits their environment.
• You can ask yourself: Are you creating a solution for a large medical center or a small clinic? How long are patients willing to wait for a doctor’s appointment? Do they have the flexibility to update their appointment time on the go? Also, consider how these environments will impact your UI/UX design requirements and how users will interact with your patient management software.
• Reduce distractions: The interface design needs to be user-friendly and simple. This is because redundant tabs, flashy designs, and cumbersome functions can distract healthcare providers, leading to delayed responses. This can have serious consequences for a patient’s health. Therefore, we recommend choosing a minimalist UI/UX design for your hospital data management system.

Step 6. Determine the Development Method

The next step is determining the right hospital management system development method. There are two ways of development that you can consider. One is to use ready-made SaaS development solutions. You can also hire a custom software development company to create a software solution for you from scratch. However, the final choice will depend on your specific goals, time frame, and budget.

You can choose an off-the-shelf system if you are limited in money and time. These products are known to be affordable and can be up and running within a few hours. So, it is important to understand that the initial cost is low, but it can increase as the number of users of the platform increases.

In addition, out-of-the-box solutions may also come with unnecessary features or, conversely, will lack some essential features you need. In other words, off-the-shelf software does not allow for much customization.

On the other hand, if you are building a long-term project with a large scope that will grow and expand, the best approach is to partner with an outsourced software development company.

A dedicated outsourced development team can build a web development strategy that allows you to launch a basic version of your product more quickly and start generating revenue.

They also ensure that the software is highly customizable and scalable. Providing a solid foundation for adding new features and meeting the growing needs of your business. Furthermore, when outsourced, the development team can also provide ongoing technical support, ensuring your product continues to run smoothly.

Step 7. Launch MVP first

A very important step is to launch MVP first. Developing an MVP for healthcare can be compared to clinical trials for new drugs. The reason is that both processes aim to test the solution’s feasibility, effectiveness, and safety before launching it to the wider market.

However, building an MVP before clinical trials has some distinct advantages:

• Fast Launch: Allows you to release the basic version of the hospital management system within six months of the project starting. The shorter time frame can be explained by the nature of the “minimum viable product” and provides basic functionality to help users understand the purpose of the product.
• Cost-effective: Developing an MVP is also cost-effective. Because it allows you to evaluate the importance of the selected functionality for your hospital management system project, if you find some features unnecessary, you can skip them in the final development stage, saving you money.
• Added value: By collecting and analyzing user feedback, you can find out what they need. This helps you improve your product with features that they need. As a result, you will have more than a solution that only works well on paper. The result is a product with lasting value. It can effectively solve specific healthcare challenges and help save lives.

Step 8. Release the final product

Once you have launched the MVP version of your hospital management system and proven the feasibility of your idea, it is time to collect feedback from your early users. They are the healthcare providers and patients. Their comments, observations, and insights will help you improve your product to make it more effective and useful.

In addition, we also recommend using specific pre-defined KPI metrics to measure the success of your software solution. The most important of these are:

• Customer churn rate
• Customer acquisition cost
• Customer lifetime value
• Average revenue per user

These results will show how users perceive your product’s current and future value.

V. How Adamo Software can help your business with hospital management system solutions

The demand for healthcare software is rising, making it the perfect time to invest in a hospital management system. With Adamo Software, you get a dedicated development team to build a custom solution for your needs. From patient records and appointments to inventory management and billing, we create seamless, efficient systems that improve hospital operations.

Whether you want to streamline workflows, reduce manual errors, or improve patient care, the right software can make a big difference. Let Adamo Software be your trusted technology partner. Contact us today to make your hospital management system a reality!