If you are in charge of finding the best hospital policy management application for your hospital or health network, choose wisely - just because an application is categorized as healthcare IT does not prove its viability in your organization's environment. Even top healthcare IT companies can fail to meet your needs if you overlook certain criteria, particularly if you are looking for a web-based solution. The criteria below can help you make an informed decision when choosing the best software to manage your hospital or health system's policies and procedures.
Is it user-friendly? If you are faced with a choice between an application with a boring, user-friendly interface or a beautiful but complicated one, go with user-friendly. Your staff will thank you.Is it built with searchability in mind? Fast searching is critical when patient outcomes are at stake. An application's searching should look at every word on a page (full-text) and shouldn't require manual keyword tagging; it should adjust for misspellings and account for stemming (understanding that "medicines" matches "medicine" in a search result). Ask the software provider how it works.
Does it go mobile? Make sure your hospital policy management system works on mobile devices used at your site - whether they are laptops, cell phones or tablets - so caregivers have access to vital information at their fingertips.
Is it in line with your disaster/emergency requirements? Internet connectivity can be lost for a variety of reasons, so you (or the software provider) must be able to back up information on-site for emergency situations when using a Software as a Service application. Ask about how data is backed up and whether they use multiple servers in geographically separated data centers
Is it fairly priced? The Trojan Horse approach to pricing where every new user increases your costs is not only unfair but is also impossible to manage in today's dynamic healthcare environment - don't invest in a software unless the price is capped.
Does it support more than just policies? Healthcare organizations need to house procedures and other vital information in one place, and these can take many forms. Create an inventory of the different document types and find out how suitable the software is for each one.
Is it scalable? Applications must have the ability to expand, change and integrate to support this ever-changing environment of a hospital or a growing health system. If you are part of an integrated health system or health network, ask if the software allows you to share policies across hospitals.
Will it integrate with your existing tools? Just because a healthcare IT application is delivered via the web does not mean that it needs to stand apart from the other applications in your IT environment. Ask your provider if the software integrates with Active Directory and any other tools used by your healthcare organization.
Is it architected for the web? In selecting a SaaS or other web-based hospital policy management software, make sure the application was originally architected for the Internet rather than retrofitted from a non-web-based application. This ensures it has adequate security, speed and site monitoring, among other benefits.
Will it effectively decrease IT's workload? Before committing to a policy management software for your hospital, consider whether a browser plug-in is necessary and whether your IT staff will be required to help or train users; if you're still unsure, run it by IT first.
About the Author
Having spent the majority of his time building high-growth companies, Steven Ehrlich has been in the software industry for 20+ years and is currently president and CEO of PolicyStat. The Indianapolis-based company provides a web-based hospital policy management software for healthcare organizations wanting to reduce costs, increase productivity, mitigate risk and improve patient outcomes.
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