What is patient management software?

One truth of the digital age: No matter where you go or what you do, you are leaving data behind. In fact, research suggests that people create as much as 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day, and that more data was created between 2010 and 2019 than throughout all previous human history.

In healthcare, providers have been collecting and analyzing data longer than most industries. To administer the correct treatment, doctors and other medical professionals need to have access to detailed patient history as well as other relevant patient data. Electronic health record systems (EHRs) were first introduced as a way to optimize the record-keeping process. Rather than relying on paper files, digital records were indexed, analyzed, and retrieved with no more than a few keystrokes. EHRs revolutionized the healthcare industry and paved the way for other advances in patient management software. But while EHRs are great for keeping records, a healthcare CRM (customer relationship management) is better for engaging and managing patients.

Patient management software is designed to collect relevant data from medical devices. However, in a broader sense, patient management software is any digital system designed to assist in the collection, organization, or analysis of patient data. The wide range of applications for patient management allows users to implement solutions for specific medical fields, such as mental health, dental, clinical care, and more. Even among specific medical disciplines, various kinds of patient management software have been created — patient complaint management software deals with client feedback, patient account management assists with account details and finances, and patient medical records management supplements standard EHRs. Unfortunately, with so many different systems, healthcare professionals often find themselves juggling too many programs.

To make matters worse, these programs are all too often only partially compatible with each other, making seamless data integration nearly impossible. When this happens, medical errors are the natural result. For example, patient charts cannot be found on 30% of patient visits. Thankfully, there is technology capable of unifying these systems: customer relationship management (CRM) reimagined for healthcare.

In its traditional form, CRM helps businesses manage data, collaborate across platforms and departments, and keep the customer at the center of everything they do. While health systems are not conventional businesses, patients are beginning to expect the same level of service from both. The benefits of a healthcare CRM include better information organization, improved communication (both internally and externally with patients), enhanced service, optimized team collaborations, and advanced data analysis. Additionally, healthcare CRM makes it possible to automate tasks, allowing medical professionals to identify prospective patients, follow up with them, and add them to different channels and marketing funnels. These benefits have the potential to effectively eliminate many of the problems associated with medical practice and patient engagement, growing the patient base in the process.

Of course, CRM systems are not designed to be replacements for existing EHRs. Instead, they function as supplemental systems, boosting and unifying other systems. This augmentation enables providers to put their focus where it belongs — on the patient.

Although CRM-enhanced patient management software offers many advantages, the key benefits can be summarized as follows:

Knowing how to treat a patient can sometimes be difficult. Advanced healthcare CRM can display an in-depth profile of every patient. Providers easily access clinical and engagement events including appointment and medication history, current conditions, data from medical devices, and even a patient’s preferred contact methods. This is because CRM works in conjunction with existing EHR to turn important patient data into a coherent, easily referenced story.

Providers need to be up to date on every single patient as well as their entire patient population health. A healthcare CRM can generate a single, data-visualization-enhanced interface so that medical professionals can view all patients and tasks and prioritize the most important or time-sensitive actions. Users can segment populations, dividing them into groups for more targeted communication, and visualize the entire care team to collaborate more easily, facilitating more effective transfers of patients between doctors. Many processes are also automated, such as creating care plans from templates and alerting staff if tasks are not completed.

The best treatments are those that give patients ownership of their journey. Healthcare CRM makes data more accessible, not only for care providers, but for the patients themselves. Doctors and patients collaborate together, communicating directly through secure messaging services. Together, they can chart progress, set and evaluate health goals, and even contact specialists when needed. And, given that 72% of physicians access drug information from smartphones, 63% review medical research from tablets, and 44% communicate with nurses and other staff via smartphones, the patient management system is mobile-compatible, bridging the divide between doctors, patients, and data.

A healthcare CRM may be the most effective path to achieving patient satisfaction. Salesforce Health Cloud was developed in partnership with leading healthcare companies — including Centura Health, DJO Global, Radboud University Medical Center, UCSF, and Philips — and takes advantage of the most advanced cloud and data analysis technologies to provide a complete CRM solution for existing EHR systems. The goal is to establish relationships based on trust between patients and providers and to collaborate on treatment that is not only effective, but completely satisfactory for everyone.

Learn about Health Cloud.