These days, every healthcare organization is utilizing some digital system of patient data management. Patient data must be made easily accessible to medical practitioners in physicians’ offices, clinics, and hospitals, and it should also be shared with pharmacists, diagnosticians, and other medical specialists. Sensitive data of patients are kept as electronic health records (EHRs), and as such, health information technology (HIT) personnel must undertake new strategies to protect and manage that data. They must also ensure that healthcare data management protocols follow various government regulations.

Medical care providers are benefitting a lot from healthcare data management even without government incentives. However, they also face certain hurdles from the management of healthcare data.

HIPAA Compliance

For HIPAA compliance, a particular set of EHR security measures is required, which should be accessible by patients and must be shared among practitioners. For managers of hospital information systems (HIS) that are used to working with a closed-network system, it can be challenging to implement security protocols and shared data access through cloud computing.

Mobile Computing

Nowadays, handheld data entry systems and computer tablets are utilized to access patient records and directly input data entries, reducing steps and minimizing errors. However, HIS managers will have to ensure that the entire care facility has secure wireless access with sufficient bandwidth to support the increasing number of handheld workstations. Additionally, new compliance and security protocols must be developed for medical practitioners who prefer to use their mobile computing hardware.

Sharing Patient Data

EHR data stores implemented within the healthcare provider system can be standardized. However, pharmacies, outside health testing providers, and others may use different protocols and systems. Integrating various systems of data management and sharing full medical records continue to be a challenge.

Lack of integration between administrative and clinical systems

Medical records kept on the hospital floor and by physicians need to be furnished with inaccurate patient billing and insurance claims. The data management system must be set up so that treatment codes match and the care offered is tracked precisely for both analytics and administrative purposes.

Operational Analytics

EHRs are essential for evaluating operational efficiency. For instance, healthcare workforce management is assessed primarily through healthcare and patient care data. HIS managers continuously search for new methods to extract healthcare data to execute profitability and productivity analytics to separate practice areas that need to be re-evaluated and revised from profit centers.

Conclusion

These are just some of the challenges that HIS professionals encounter regarding data management systems. Additionally, various challenges result from data security, care collaboration, and government regulators. If you can formulate effective compliance and data management strategies, you’ll be indispensable to healthcare providers.