Medical practices have more options these days to work more efficiently and save costs, particularly when it comes to the crucial software that underpins their operations. Your medical practice can work more nimbly and save money by switching over to a cloud-based electronic health record and practice management solution.

Information is power. The more useful and actionable information you can provide to your patients, the better off they will be because when the details sink in, you’ll be able to improve how you care for them. These days, patients have access to more health-related information than ever before thanks to databases connected to the internet and various websites from government, academia and the medical industry. Access to this store of knowledge doesn’t guarantee that patients will take advantage of it, though. And when patients do research on their own, they may wind up inadvertently relying on bogus information that could steer them wrong about treatments, medications and the very nature of diseases, injuries and other ailments.

The work that goes on behind the scenes to keep your organization’s computational infrastructure humming along may not always get the recognition it deserves. However, for all the good things your information technology department does for the organization, there may be some errors that need correcting. With that in mind, are you making these top five healthcare IT mistakes?

Whether you are still in the midst of preparing your medical practice to implement a new electronic health record software solution or have already made the leap and an EHR has been put in place, it’s important to verify that you are using the application to its full potential. The EHR application your decided to bring online at your facility is designed to help doctors, nurses and other medical professionals access patient information and add new details quickly and conveniently. Installing the software and integrating it with other systems is just the first step, of course. You’ll want to check that you are doing what’s needed to get the most out of the EHR. Here are three steps to take to ensure that your EHR software is fully optimized.

You never want to push your key staff members too hard. While you might get some temporarily impressive results in terms of how many patients are seen, burning the candle at both ends will wind up being a prescription for disaster.

The more efficient healthcare providers become in the services they provide, especially to patients who are covered through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the more resources we will have at our disposal. To that end, CMS recently released some tips to help eligible professionals, hospitals and critical care hospitals as they attest to meaningful use this year. If you don’t comply with the meaningful use criteria, your organization won’t be eligible to get the financial incentives offered by the government for CMS patients. It’s in your best interest to do your part, so here are four tips for successful meaningful use attestation.

Does your medical organization use a paper-based system to run the office and keep track of patient information? If so, you know that a change needs to come in the way you conduct daily business. After all, you are probably aware of the importance up upgrading your facility to use modern software designed specifically for taking care of electronic health records and streamlining practice management. If you are in the midst of making a case for the transition to the rest of your team or if you’ve been on the fence about switching over, read on for five big benefits of transitioning to an all-in-one EHR and PM cloud solution.

The following excerpt is from an article found RevCycleIntelligence.com. It was written by Vera Gruessner. ------------------------------- Revenue cycle management remains relatively elusive in the new healthcare landscape, as new regulations and reforms have led the industry to evolve and left many hospitals scrambling to keep their revenue strong in a value-based care reimbursement model. Today, technology platforms can play a role in assisting providers, payers, and consumers communicate and interact more efficiently, which will lead to a more durable revenue cycle management strategy. There are several key areas that revenue cycle managers could focus on to ensure their medical facility optimized their reimbursement.

The success of any given country or even a civilization over the long run has a great deal to do with the overall health of its people. By paying close attention to the medical prospects of a group in the face of common ailments, for example, researchers can detect patterns and come up with methods to treat emerging problems before they get too out of hand. From controlling the number of people who fall ill to infectious diseases to dealing with the growing issue of violence in crowded cities, monitoring the health of groups is an important aspect of our medical system.

In a profession like medicine where there are so many unique terms and important phrases to use on a regular basis, doctors, nurses and others find themselves using acronyms to speed up communication.