Healthcare Information System

• Hospitals, which provide complete medical care including diagnostic services, surgery and continuous nursing care. Some hospitals specialize in treatment of the mentally ill, cancer patients, or children and may accept patients on an inpatient (overnight) or outpatient basis;

• Nursing and residential care facilities provide inpatient nursing, rehabilitation, and health-related personal care to those who need continuous nursing care, but do not require hospital services;

• Physicians and surgeons practice privately or with groups of practitioners who have the same or different specialties. Many physicians and surgeons prefer to join group practices because they afford backup coverage, reduce overhead expenses, and facilitate consultation with peers;

• Dentists and dental clinics comprise about 20% of health care establishments and include dentists who specialize in a single field of dentistry such as endodontic;

• Home health care services are provided in private homes, primarily to the elderly, by skilled nursing specialists under a physician’s supervision;

• Other health practitioners include chiropractors, optometrists, podiatrists, occupational and physical therapists, psychologists, audiologists, speech-language pathologists, dietitians, and other health practitioners;

• Outpatient care centers include kidney dialysis centers, outpatient mental health and substance abuse centers, health maintenance organization medical centers, and freestanding ambulatory surgical and emergency centers;

• Other ambulatory health care service includes ambulance and helicopter transport services, blood and organ banks, and other ambulatory health care services, such as pacemaker monitoring services and smoking cessation programs; and

• Medical and diagnostic laboratories provide analytic or diagnostic services to the medical profession or directly to patients following a physician’s prescription.

• Computerized physician order entry (CPOE) systems manages doctor orders and instructions for services;

• Patient billing and accounting systems are a single system or a set of systems developed to bill for each healthcare resource utilized for patient care e.g. physician fees, hospital resources, and medical center supplies;

• Cost accounting systems track patient costs and cost of facility operations;

• Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems help providers organize the complexity of having multiple teams, departments and resources provide comprehensive patient care. These may include accounting, human resource, benefits, supply chain management, and purchasing modules;

• Medical records administration systems keep digital records as well as help catalogue hard copy records of patient accounts;

• Scheduling, admit, discharge and transfer (ADT) systems handle patient registration, admittance, transfers, and discharges;

• Operating room management information systems are used by hospitals and surgical centers to schedule procedures, surgeons and their teams, instruments and other resources required for procedures, as well as maintain an account of actual surgical procedures, complications and outcomes;

• Credentialing software is used to track provider certifications and credentials to ensure that they are valid and licensed to practice in the areas in which they are assigned;

• Facilities management systems are used by large provider institutions to manage plant assets.  Those with multiple buildings and diverse uses, particularly those with research and academic arms as well as hospitals and clinics, may also invest in some sort of space management program software;

• Ancillary and specialty systems include:
• Radiology information systems;
• Lab management;
• MRI imaging systems;
• Cardiology specific systems;
• Pediatric and neo-natal focused applications;
• Emergency department applications;
• Claims management software;
• Bed/asset tracking applications;
• Pharmacy and drug tracking; and
• RFIS systems.