Healthcare order management has made significant progress since the days of fax machines. Computerized healthcare order entry is still fragmented for many practices, though. For healthcare order management to be fully functional, physician compliance and integration with the electronic health record system are essential. With a quality healthcare order management system, you can develop streamlined workflows and strengthen your clinical decision support system.
An order management system can eliminate your reliance on paper and the risks and limitations that come with it. Below, we cover what order management in healthcare is, tips for successful order management, advantages of this system and how Tangible Solutions can help.
What Is Healthcare Order Management?
In healthcare, order management involves requesting items like chemical labs. Previously, electronic health record systems have made order fulfillment inefficient. Some EHRs lack a way to submit complete electronic orders to imaging centers or labs that will complete the work. As a result, many transactions have a long paper trail, which is contrary to the digitized system’s purpose.
Fortunately, advances in electronic solutions offer a powerful, convenient way to manage orders for pathology, radiology, labs and durable medical equipment. Care teams can now enjoy an accurate, efficient ordering process for radiology and lab procedures. An order management system supports every stage of the process, from the order to delivery of the results. A good system provides a centralized place to manage orders from multiple channels if necessary.
Features of Successful Clinical Order Management
The process of healthcare order management is often manual and tedious in many settings. Employees may have to print paper orders, send faxes to referred providers or make calls to follow up on instructions. When the ordering process is labor-intensive, it can increase tensions with referring providers and impede patient care.
On the other hand, successful order management can lead to happier patients and drive profitability. Healthcare organizations can clearly communicate information, boost physician satisfaction and improve the patient experience. Below are some of the features of successful order management.
- Lab eReq: Computerized provider order entry information flows into the proper service provider system without the need to re-key the information.
- ABN retrieval: The EHR’s up-to-date insurance information lets service providers look up the patient’s coverage.
- Split requisition: You can split requisition by specimen collection requirements or destination.
- Ask-at-order entry questions: The service provider automatically sends ask-at-order entry questions.
- Visual dashboard: View an order’s status on the visual dashboard at any time.
- Compendium crosswalk: The CPT codes from the EHR are necessary to map the service provider code.
- Secure electronic orders: RSA 2048-bit encryption protects the secure transmission of results and orders.
- Merge orders or requisitions: Create an electronic requisition for several orders that originate from a clinic, practice or community hospital.
- Lab-specific specimen details: These details ensure people follow the proper procedures for specimen handling and collection.
Advantages of an Electronic Healthcare Order Management System
An order management system can offer benefits for physicians and patients. Below are some of the advantages a healthcare order management system provides.
- Visibility: When everyone in the organization can access and track order status, it can significantly improve patient care.
- Cost reductions: Since this system leads to greater accuracy, you can enjoy improved employee productivity while reducing or eliminating redundant tests.
- Refined workflow: The system can help refine your workflow, letting you quickly and easily manage medical data, reporting and results. It improves an organization’s cost-effectiveness and reduces repetitive, time-consuming tasks that can lead to human error.
- Reduced data entry: Since the same information is available across every step of the order process, you can perform less data entry, cutting down on errors and letting you spend more time focusing on mission-critical tasks.
- Better patient service: Get real-time analytics with your healthcare order management system, so your staff can have up-to-date information regarding pending orders. Improved service provides for a better overall patient experience.
How Tangible Solutions Can Help With Happe-Orders
Happe-Orders lets you submit complete clinical orders electronically. Happe-Orders offers the following features.
- Secure cloud: Our secure cloud communications allow you to skip setting up and maintaining numerous VPN connections. We secure every connection with SSL 2048-bit encryption, which provides private, HIPAA-compliant data transfers.
- XSight dashboard: Our dashboard gives you a clear view of your connections and message statuses. With this tool, you will know whether a lab has received your order and sent the corresponding result.
- Multi-specialty support: Happe-Orders supports traditional lab orders, pathology orders and radiology or imaging orders. The technology behind Happe-Orders makes connecting with other destinations virtually limitless. It improves EHR functionality and creates a more efficient ordering process for physicians, while lab companies can enjoy improved accuracy. For patients, Happe-Orders provides faster results and minimizes duplicate imaging scans and tests.
- Full ordering capability and monitoring: A robust monitoring system can allow you to manage the physician order entry connection from beginning to end. The monitoring feature provides insight into the status of the connection and the data flowing among healthcare providers. The originating EHR directly processes lab results when they are available and updates the patient record accordingly. Happe-Orders leads to timely care and more satisfaction due to speedy communication among healthcare providers, labs and EHRs.
Other features of Happe-Orders include:
- Ask-at-order entry questions
- Matching EHR to vendor order codes
- Up-to-date insurance information from the EHR
- Single electronic requisition for multiple orders originating from a clinic, practice or hospital
Contact Us at Tangible
At Tangible, we can help you better manage electronic medical records, fulfill government requirements, maximize patient portal functionality and share patient data throughout settings of care. Our healthcare information technology team has extensive experience in ambulatory care, healthcare data integration and data integration solutions for healthcare organizations.
As your trusted partner, our mission is to use our subject matter expertise and experience to engage in long-term relationships by providing value through proven and effective healthcare data solutions. We provide additional value through excellent and responsive customer service. We are happy to demonstrate our solution via a one-on-one conversation. Schedule a consultation or contact us today to learn more about how we can help you achieve successful order management.