Government entities are frequently in flux. As technology continues to advance and redefine the public sector, employees, patients and the public have heightened expectations. Meeting demand requires innovation and digitization, which requires implementing health information technology. Since manual processes and outdated legacy systems hinder progress, the commercial and federal sectors need solutions that improve patient care and address gaps and challenges within their organizations.
With secure Health Information Technology (HIT), government spaces will benefit from advancements in confidentiality, quality, coordination and efficiency in providing and streamlining care. If you plan to upgrade your technology, consider how HIT services can centralize your workflows and communication procedures.
How Advanced Healthcare IT Has Transformed Government Spaces
From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, many healthcare and government organizations have scrambled to implement new digital strategies to keep up with shortages and increased need for service. The acceleration of these new digital health options includes HIT, which has become integral to practicing medicine. The ongoing pandemic is an example of how constant changes in customer demand affect all industries.
Health professionals must prepare and embrace new ways of providing healthcare, such as automating workflows and introducing telehealth services. These changes aim to streamline manual, time-consuming processes to help providers deliver better and more efficient care. Many healthcare and government organizations are seeking robust, responsive and flexible IT solutions that make communication and decision-making easier.
The government can use many HIT systems:
- Telehealth
- Electronic medical records
- Electronic health records
- Personal health records
- Electronic prescribing
- Computerized disease registries
- Computerized provider order entry
- Clinical decision support
HIT plays a significant role in patient care and safety in all healthcare settings. For example, organizations worldwide have adopted electronic health records as they shift away from hard-copy paper files. As of 2021, 78% of office-based physicians and 96% of acute care hospitals use EHRs. This HIT solution eliminates the need for the extensive manual labor paper records require, such as searching, copying, faxing and making phone calls about patient records.
With advanced EHR solutions, providers can quickly and efficiently transfer patient data when needed. Additionally, HIT solutions play a critical role in saving time, providing alerts, improving safety and preventing medical errors. Technology-driven solutions like EHRs also offer many more advantages in improving patient access and care, such as:
- Reducing paperwork
- Coordinating up-to-date and accurate information among care providers
- Alerting different doctors of prescription drug interactions and risk
- Reducing unnecessary procedures and tests by increasing provider access to all results and records
- Helping identify inaccurate or missing information on health records
While EHRs have proven to improve operational efficiency and generate positive returns on investment, they’re only one element in the bigger picture of HIT. Innovative HIT solutions aim to keep patients at the forefront in commercial and federal sectors. This updated technology can enhance business processes, delivery and customer satisfaction.
A recent report emphasizes the need for digital transformation and urges government entities to invest in digitization to address gaps in care and promote patient outcomes. Reorganizing the healthcare system can create more resilience and sustainability, even amid economic uncertainty.
Updated technology can upgrade government service, including how organizations provide care to patients. Whether it’s reducing repetitive administrative tasks, streamlining collaboration among government agencies or increasing security by modernizing IT infrastructure, HIT gives these entities the ability to focus their time and efforts on more high-level, strategic tasks.
Importance and Advantages of Updated HIT in Government Entities
What makes health IT essential? For starters, information is half the equation. The easier it is for healthcare providers to access patient records and transfer necessary data, the more they can upgrade their services and the entire health system. Additionally, using modern HIT solutions can identify and address gaps in care, which can enhance compliance and security.
HIT enables health providers to effectively manage patient care by sharing information quickly and securely. Updated HIT solutions make electronic health information readily available whenever and wherever, improving the quality of care while making providers more efficient.
Before the availability of modernized, updated HIT solutions, many government entities relied on legacy systems with outdated programming languages, unsupported software and hardware and security vulnerabilities. These decades-old systems often cause compatibility issues and require excessive maintenance. Many of them need to modernize to provide better and more efficient services to citizens. Among the many lessons learned throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, HIT solutions that enable flexibility, insight, speed and innovation are vital.
Technology users include frontline healthcare providers, patients, medical researchers, public health agencies and government employees. Because government entities assume an extensive range of roles with various needs and goals, HIT systems are critical to delivering and advancing healthcare in these spaces. Let’s look at the functions, goals and benefits of HIT solutions.
- Increased accountability: By digitizing healthcare data, HIT makes it easier for governmental agencies to review and analyze data for better insights, allowing administrators to prevent issues like overcrowding and hold themselves accountable for implementing evidence-based solutions.
- Improved patient health outcomes: HIT systems provide tools and applications that help organizations address patient safety and care for better overall health outcomes. A high-quality HIT solution can flag errors, detect diseases and provide many other helpful resources that contribute to population health.
- Better healthcare delivery: Along with patient-care benefits, HIT solutions aim to improve healthcare services’ efficiency. Through enhanced coordination, communication and scheduling of care, organizations can universally advance their practices.
- Decreased healthcare costs: As rising costs continue to threaten many healthcare and government entities, organizations increasingly rely on automated solutions. Using HIT means these entities can refine operational efficiencies, which alone could amount to billions in savings annually.
- Streamlined communication: HIT solutions can quickly and easily store and retrieve data, such as patient information, to facilitate communication between healthcare providers. That means better tracking, reporting and adherence to guidelines. They can also inform patients and providers of upcoming appointments, tests and procedures.
- Enhanced patient safety: With medication alerts, reminders and clinical flags, health providers can better evaluate the efficacy of their methods and optimize evidence-based care for common conditions. These solutions are also more legible, leading to better overall medication safety and reducing the risk of prescription errors.
MicroHealth Creates Custom Solutions for Government-Based Health Care Professionals
MicroHealth is a HIT company offering technology for government services. We understand the interconnectedness and importance of HIT, which is why we aim to create solutions and consulting expertise across many areas:
- Telehealth
- Data analytics
- Cloud development and management
- EHRs
- Clinical training and implementation
- Development, security and operations
- Software development and integration
- Medical simulations
- Independent verification and validation and testing
At MicroHealth, we have an extensive knowledge of healthcare. Our staff includes HIT experts and clinicians, from administrators to doctors to nurses. We are healthcare specialists first and foremost, which is why our services are so unique.
We start with a robust assessment to examine your current systems, needs and goals. From there, we create a custom solution to modernize healthcare IT for your customers, which can range from connecting your legacy systems to developing a custom EHR from the ground up. Whatever your needs are, it’s our goal to tailor a solution that keeps your patients at the forefront.
Technology-Driven Healthcare Solutions From MicroHealth
Finding quality HIT tools can be a challenge. You’ll need to choose a team who knows the government and healthcare sectors inside and out and specializes in meeting your unique needs and goals. At MicroHealth, we specialize in anything IT-related in healthcare. Whether you want to upgrade communication, streamline patient records or increase interoperability, we have everything you need to protect your patients’ health.
We pride ourselves on being health specialists first and technologists second, providing organizations like yours with sustainable and agile business solutions to enable you to give your patients the best care possible. With MicroHealth, you can maximize the value of HIT and streamline your operations with reliable white-glove service. Connect with us today to learn more about our solutions for your HIT project.