While not a new concept, today the continually evolving cloud system offers a one-window solution to all the medical billing, coding, and general information management requirements of a healthcare establishment.
The Challenges
Earlier this year, the New York Times published a report highlighting the rising costs of treatment as one of the most significant challenges faced by the medical industry today. Alongside expensive healthcare equipment, medication and procedures, mounting operational costs have been to blame.
As the complexity of the documentation involved increases, the need for the support and infrastructure required to manage all the information also rises. In-house data management operations are expensive. As is the nature of an industry like healthcare, even the simplest medical procedure is recorded via a myriad of paperwork – procedural and billing documentation, patient records, and even insurance details. In order to ensure accurate recordkeeping, hospitals and clinics are forced to invest in expensive, in-house infrastructure to manage their information, data, and files. Additional costs include hiring and training staff to operate and secure these sophisticated IT systems.
Maintaining and securing these in-house information systems is also expensive. Alongside constant upgrades and innovative features, organizations also risk the under-utilization of these expensive resources.
Cloud Computing As Solution
Catering to Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance and security, as well as the challenges faced by providers, payers and suppliers, the cloud offers a cheaper alternative to the ever increasing administrative costs in the healthcare industry.
Organizations that have adopted this technology have observed significant cuts in their operations costs. Accurate recordkeeping is essential for any healthcare provider. A principal source for the entire billing procedure, a significant portion of the documentation relates to complex insurance programs and associated claims. Maintaining up-to-date patient records is imperative – treatments, procedures, and even routine visits, all contribute towards data management challenges.
Cloud computing offers the healthcare business a simple solution in regards to their data management systems- depending on their needs and the budget available for this purpose, healthcare providers can choose to opt between private and public Cloud Computing systems. With a significant cost difference between the two, a private cloud houses a single client’s information, and can only be sourced through certain administrative capacities. Public clouds, on the other hand, make use of shared digital space.
Hybrid Clouds offer a third option. Here, the information management system incorporates in-house systems, as well as the cloud. A beneficial solution to the challenges of the healthcare industry, hybrid clouds gives clients the option to maintain direct access to their most important data, while the rest may be uploaded to the cloud.
Hosting a variety of operational applications, cloud computing can also offer data security, recovery and backup facilities. Besides being a more cost-effective option, the cloud is also flexible. Customers need only pay for what they require, and various settings can be changed with a single click.
A perfect medical cloud solution provides a wholesome SaaS (Software as a Service) experience to its healthcare clients, and has the capacity to manage all the sophisticated EMR/EHR software.
Revolutionizing Healthcare
Numerous possibilities have emerged since cloud computing operations have switched to the newer WAN systems. Not only are the latest clouding systems super-cheap, but they have also opened new career avenues in the field of medicine.
A report by HIMSS Analytics observed that 83% of healthcare organizations were using cloud computing. As this number grows with the demands for affordable healthcare, hospitals and clinics lagging behind in this trend will be forced to utilize the cloud for an integrated medical recordkeeping system.
A centralized system dedicated to maintaining and sharing patient records among partner healthcare organizations would ensure that all patients are able to receive medical attention on demand, while also cutting costs across the board.
Cloud computing operations have simplified the documentation process, while creating extensive systems to monitor cloud operations. Health providers are presented with a unique opportunity to cut down on expenses associated with risk management, operational integrity and data security.
Cloud computing has already made its mark helping organizations manage their data more effectively . With the inbuilt capability of these systems to analyze big data, the healthcare industry will also be able to improve the quality of their treatment, while individual agencies will be able to identify bottlenecks in their operations and come up with solutions to successfully impact their efficiency.
The cloud computing system is an effectual solution to the challenges facing the healthcare industry. With the growing global population, and subsequent rising healthcare needs, the amount of medical information is only set to increase. The cloud has continually proven its effectiveness as a cost-reduction mechanism, attracting more and more organizations and applications to its infrastructure.