Monday, July 26th, 2010
New Service Tax Notification No. 24/2010-Service Tax dated 22.06.2010
The Central Government has introduced service tax on cashless services in Hospitals & Nursing Homes for Health checkups & treatments w.e.f 01.07.2010 as per Notification No. 24/2010-service Tax dated 22.06.2010.
Keeping in mind the above, hospitals will henceforth be required to add service Tax @ 10.3 % to the hospital bill on all bills for cashless treatment generated on or after 1st July, 2010.
Since service Tax liability will be borne by the Insurance Company, the amount towards service tam will be authorized by the insurance provider as a part of the Authorization Letter amount.
Our updated release for Insurance management is fully compliant with the new regulations.
Tags: hospitals, India, service tax
Posted in Uncategorized, regulatory norms | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 20th, 2010
NHS East Berkshire is to trial technology to allow patients to carry out rehabilitation exercises at home without needing to see a physiotherapist, as part of the launch of O2 Health.
The technology will allow patients to return home and carry out pre-determined rehabilitation programmes shown on a TV screen and have their progress monitored remotely via movement sensors.
Data will be captured and communicated back to a physiotherapist for ongoing evaluation to make sure the patient is carrying out the correct movements..
Read full article here
Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust is set to roll-out digital pens to more than 130 staff across its community midwifery department.
The trust believes it was the first in the country to pilot the digital pens, which have been developed by digital pen providers Anoto and PaperIQ together with BlackBerry.
It will now roll-out the system over the next two weeks. Midwives will be able to visit mums-to-be in the community and digitally record information. The data will then be sent back to the trust using a BlackBerry device.
Read full article here
Tags: nintendo, patient, wii
Posted in healthcare, technology | No Comments »
Friday, June 18th, 2010
Recently we were invited by a long standing client of ours to speak about the challenges in implementing EMR in their group of hospitals across the state. The audience, consisting of young doctors and supporting staff listened patiently to the 30 minute presentation followed by a demo of the application, which runs successfully at a 400 bedded hospital within the same city. The verdict - medical community is not ready yet. Interim solution is to adopt a document management system.
We have been doing experiments with touch screen devices such as iPhone and Android tablets to build our next generation applications for hospitals and nursing homes. One of the areas where we foresee significant impact would be be Electronic Medical Records. Apple has reported to be having workshops around iPad as a potential device which could bring down the digital divide among the medical community.
A few vendors are now offering online electronic medical records as a service. Data privacy and ownership questions remain unanswered.
Some interesting read here.
Most doctors hate their EMRs because it wasn’t designed for them – it was designed for a note taker, a record keeper, a financial analyst, or an administrator. We know doctors hate EMRs because even after more three decades of availability the dismal statistics of the opening paragraph persist. Physicians have voted with their lack of EMR system adoptions. It’s not about the money – billions of government money being thrown at physicians won’t solve bad design. Physicians aren’t averse to technology; they are averse to technology that misuse their time and reduces patient interaction. Full story
Tags: android, apple, emr, hospitals, ipad
Posted in emr, hospitals | No Comments »
Monday, May 31st, 2010
ONE day last summer, Charlie Martin felt a sharp pain in his lower back. But he couldn’t jump into his car and rush to the doctor’s office or the emergency room: Mr. Martin, a crane operator, was working on an oil rig in the South China Sea off Malaysia.
From thousands of miles away, Dr. Oscar Boultinghouse checks the eye of a patient. He could, though, get in touch with a doctor thousands of miles away, via two-way video. Using an electronic stethoscope that a paramedic on the rig held in place, Dr. Oscar W. Boultinghouse, an emergency medicine physician in Houston, listened to Mr. Martin’s heart. “The extreme pain strongly suggested a kidney stone,” Dr. Boultinghouse said later. A urinalysis on the rig confirmed the diagnosis, and Mr. Martin flew to his home in Mississippi for treatment.
Mr. Martin, 32, is now back at work on the same rig, the Courageous, leased by Shell Oil. He says he is grateful he could discuss his pain by video with the doctor. “It’s a lot better than trying to describe it on a phone,” Mr. Martin says.. Read full article here
Tags: telemedicine
Posted in healthcare, hospital, paperless hospital, patient workflow, technology, telemedicine | No Comments »
Thursday, May 13th, 2010
Hospitals are complex organizations which have huge data generated from several sources. All these can range form simple to critical but having a crucial impact on the performance of hospitals. There is always a need of collection, storage, segregation of the segment specific data in several levels and analyze them. The process does not complete here, for effective management practices we need to put the analysis in to a format which is easy to decipher and quicker to represent for management decision.
Dashboard is the tool which serves the purpose. Dashboards can be as simple as an editable white screen with prominent numbers with specific/particular headings or could be as complex as a multi bar diagram to a line graph , part whole relationship or a pie chart. The charts and graphs provide visual inputs for quicker grasping and interpretation. How is it important ?
There are many areas in the hospital operational front which need to be constantly monitored and the indicators of the performance of those areas are called key performance indicators (KPI), A key performance indicator may be related to a clinical or operational performance. Lets take an example, if your hospital has set a performance area and want to put it under surveillance e.g. the indicator of average length of stay (ALOS) then a dash board can be an excellent to continually monitor the same. Its needless to mention that ALOS monitoring is an important aspect of hospital administration because it gives an indication of operational excellence. A normal average set and a deviation from that, for that indicator would certainly help the management to take quicker analysis and quicker action saving many man hours and resources in all possible ways.
Tags: alos, dashboard, hospital
Posted in erp, hospital management, hospital reports, hospital software | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 4th, 2010
We get calls from hospitals all over the state asking for Electronic Medical Records (EMR software) , as part of the ERP solution for hospitals. EMR certainly improves quality of healthcare and keeps patient records up to date.
Recent advances in technology could bring about changes in the way EMR is looked at.? Tablet PC powered by Android would help portability, affordability and build interfaces that require no keyboard input.
Truth about EMR in India - management commitment, complexity, resistance to change, digital divide among medical community, fear of the unknown, regulatory compliance, installation cost and transparency. Here are some articles of interest.
EMR is a tough nut to crack
Integrating the deliverables in organisation goals would be another way of effectively implementing EMR in hospitals Workflow adoption is citied as another reason for EMR implementations to fail.
What doctors want to know about the web
Tags: android, emr, implementation, tablet pc
Posted in Software Associates, cost benefits, emr, hospital management, implementation, software | 1 Comment »
Friday, April 9th, 2010
Software Associates completed 8 SA-H.I.S installations within stipulated time across South Kerala during March 2010. Providing comprehensive end user training, hands on business consulting for hospital owners, ERP Implementation and legacy data conversion for a textbook style go live on 1st April. This was orchestrate through meticulous project execution, co-ordination with teams based at Kochi, Trivandrum and Kozhikode using modern communication and collaborative tools to meet hospital expectations – backed by over 2 decades of domain expertise for small and medium size hospitals. The new clients appreciated the insights into measurable return on investment, reduction in operational costs, improvements in patient discharge processes and enhancing patient overall experience for better management control and peace of mind.
Posted in India, Software Associates, cost saving, erp, hospital management, implementation, kerala, peace of mind | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010
At Software Associates, we crossed two significant milestones this month.
11th March 2010, SA completed 19th year of excellence in the ERP space for small and medium sized businesses – Healthcare, Logistics and Hospitality.
With the acquisition of yet another mid sized (100 bedded) hospital in Quilon district of Kerala, we crossed 160 installation mark.
We continue to work closely with some of our key customers to know how healthcare industry works ; always on the lookout for opportunities which would derive higher operational benefits to our clients and the consulting arm has been doing a few assignments for hospital re-structuring and introducing management best practices.
Our support helpdesk services have been further enhanced with additional hands and an enhanced support ticketing system is in place to enable priority support.
The senior team of engineers made on-site preventing maintenance calls to advice hospital owners on adoption of standard operating procedures and efficient infrastructure management.
The next release of SA-H.I.S version 4.23 is due later this week after deliberate QA checks. We have incorporated deeper automated tests this time to ensure that defects are kept to the minimum before the release of the product for client site deployment. A continuos improvement process to ensure superior products for the emerging markets.
Work on the beta release of SA-EMR is under full swing, guided by some of the leading IT savvy doctors in this region.
New financial year is when customers change ERP software and we have a busy year ending schedule with 6 concurrent client site implementations
Posted in automated testing, cost benefits, customers, emr, erp, hospital management, implementation, sa-his | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
Bad News: The Panorama Consulting Group has found that 57% of ERP implementations take longer than expected.
They attribute this fact to unrealistic expectations for implementation timeframes and failures to account for key project activities during the implementation planning process. Whatever the reason, based on these numbers, your odds of “Going Live” on a new hospital accounting and business process management solution on-time aren’t very good.
So what’s the good news?
Good News: The good news about ERP implementations is two-fold. First, the percentage of overdue implementations is down from 93% just one year ago!
Second, by selecting an implementation partner that knows your hospital business needs, has sufficient resources to support the project, and has a track record of beating these numbers, you can feel more confident that your hospital ERP software implementation will take place when and how you need it to so that your can start counting your Return On Investments.
SA-H.I.S is the largest selling ERP solution for small and medium sized hospitals and nursing homes. Always delivered on time and within budget.
Tags: erp software, hospital software, implementation, roi
Posted in erp, hospital, hospital management, sa-his | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
FutureCare 2010 will demonstrate the vital role of IT in optimizing healthcare delivery on the basis of real practical examples.
The FutureCare 2010 tour embraces seven different areas ranging from home care situations and general practice through to casualty and emergency hospital admissions. One of the highlights will be the ADAC air ambulance, complete with telemedical equipment. Following the successful approach adopted for FutureCare 2009, this year will again see experts accompanying a tour of best-practice cases of IT applications in healthcare. The themed tours will showcase applications of telemedicine in different scenarios – for example, from primary prevention aimed at a health-conscious person to tertiary prevention in the case of a chronically ill person.
FutureCare 2010 offers solutions and ideas for IT experts and decision-makers in hospitals, medical insurance companies, medical associations, etc., and also affords a meeting-place facilitating dialogue between the health care community, politicians and science.
Posted in cebit, healthcare | No Comments »
