How many beds are currently occupied at your inpatient facility? Which ones have patients that are due to be released soon? Can you determine which programs are using more beds? The ebb and flow of patients staying at your facility by its very nature must be somewhat unpredictable. When you have hard data on the status of each bed, you’ll be able to manage your resources much more effectively.

Computer systems capable of understanding human speech have become part of the fabric of our everyday life. People routinely speak to disembodied electronic assistants, such as when calling a customer help line or to check the balance on an account. We also speak to our smartphones, using them to look up information or to dictate a note. With robust speech recognition in place, we can get our jobs done faster and with fewer errors, leaving us free to devote more time to our core responsibilities.

One of the most important aspects of working as a manager or owner of a medical practice is to monitor changes in the industry for examples of ways to cut down on costs, with an eye toward minimizing wasted effort and avoiding redundancy. If members of your medical organization are entering the same information about patients and details about each encounter into your system on a regular basis, this is a big waste of time and resources that you will want to address as soon as possible. The task of entering codes into the system has traditionally been one of drudgery and monotony, often making it fraught with human error. This typically occurs because someone on staff has to manually input the codes into the system from a paper Superbill that was completed by the doctor during the encounter.

By now, most members of the medical industry are aware of the government’s requirement that we switch over to ICD-10 from International Classification of Diseases code version 9. The deadline has been extended once more, and we must all be ready for the October 1, 2015 transition. There is so much information out there now on what’s needed for ICD-10 readiness, and you likely have seen many of details being publicized. Much of the information does not require your attention any more as long as your practice has the two things that are needed most: a solid, reliable, easy-to-use ICD-10 code converter and a built-in claim denial manager.

You are probably aware that many of your competitors in healthcare have begun using electronic health record software to streamline their work. What you may not have realized is that EHR software can do much more than improve efficiencies or save your practice money. With digital information for each patient kept securely stored and easily accessible when medical professionals need it the most, EHR systems will improve patient care. Here are three ways that electronic health records keep patients safe.

Hospital administrators are always on the lookout for methods to run their facilities more efficiently and improve the care they provide to each patient. One of the leading indicators of how well a hospital is doing its core tasks is the rate of readmission. Discharging patients at the appropriate time and ensuring that they are only sent home with the proper support in place for recovery are important issues that administrators strive to address. Here are four ways hospitals can reduce readmission rates using electronic health record software.

Medical professionals need to remain ever vigilant when it comes to screening for infectious diseases in order to preserve the health of their patients, staff, and the general population. This is particularly important in cases of predictable epidemics (such as during each flu season) as well as the emergence of diseases in other countries that are poised to make a leap to the United States. A case in point is Ebola, which has been all over the news in recent days. Americans are coming to terms with the reality that routine air travel makes it easier for infected people to spread a highly dangerous disease regardless of national borders. We have to face the fact that Ebola is here now, at least to some degree. For this reason, Electronic Health Record systems should be able to handle Ebola screening questions right now, and not years from now.

Even though the transition to ICD-10 from the International Classification of Diseases code set version 9 has had its deadline extended to October 1, 2015, by the U.S. government, healthcare organizations shouldn’t sit on their hands. With less than a year to get ready, prudent managers will want to move their troops into preparation for the switchover as soon as possible. With that in mind, here are five things that signal your organization is ready for ICD-10.

Now that the U.S. government has extended the deadline for healthcare organizations to switch over to ICD-10 from version 9 of the International Classification of Diseases code, we all breathed a sigh of relief. Too many organizations had signaled that they would not be able to make the transition in time, so the new deadline for the mandatory switch is October 1, 2015.

Your medical practice is perfect and will continue to run just fine without you and your staff ever having to consider potential deficiencies, right? Of course not. No organization can rest on its laurels and hope to continue to meet the high standards it initially established, as conditions continue to change over the years. In order to deliver the best possible service, savvy managers of medical practices will make an effort to keep evaluating how they do things and to make sure existing protocols are up to modern challenges. With this in mind, here are three ways to improve your patient care.