What Are The Different Types of Health IT?

The healthcare industry has seen considerable growth for many decades. With the various medical crises that western nations face in the form of obesity and illnesses resulting from what can only be called the modern lifestyle, the healthcare industry has experienced unstifled growth. All industries that are involved with healthcare have also subsequently experienced growth. One of those major industries is Health IT services.

What Is Health IT?
Much like regular Information Technology services, Health IT is essentially IT but focused around healthcare solutions. Electronic Health Records (EHR) are an example of Health IT services. However, despite that EHR systems are not a catch-all solution depending on what type of service you need. In this article, let’s cover some different categories of Health IT implementation.

Examples of Common Health IT Systems
All Health IT systems revolve around transmitting and storing healthcare-related data for all parties involved so that all healthcare operations and decisions can be met effectively and quickly.

Electronic Health Record (EHR) Systems
We’ve discussed these a fair bit in our post Which EHR Type Should I Use. Nevertheless, EHR systems are a critical part of Health IT systems and the operational agility of any modern healthcare practice. Gone are the days of archiving endless amounts of paperwork. With EHR systems, logging information and looking it up is significantly easier—which makes patient’s lives less stressful since they’ll have faster turnaround times on problems. Clinics will also be able to leverage their labor much more effectively too.

MPI (Master Patient Indexes)
A MPI helps bridge the gap between separate patient records that exist on different databases. EHR systems to allow for this somewhat depending on if you chose an EHR system that is right for your needs, but their ability to do so is generally limited.

Master Patient Indexes are fantastic at creating a centralized patient file so that duplicates are not created across different areas which could potentially lead to accidental false reporting which ultimately contributes to claim rejections. If you’d like to avoid as many claims rejections as possible, look to outsource your healthcare administration and medical billing remotely.

Patient Portals For Clinics
Many clinics have opted into taking their patient interactions and logging online. Outside of medical billing, there are things that must be relayed between doctor and patient. For example, if you set a doctor’s appointment, you can login to your patient portal to see your appointment date and any related information. If you go in for a blood test and they send the results to the lab, instead of having to check in with the office, you can simply login online and see if the results came in as well as if your doctor has made any notes.

Of course, a good doctor will always follow up and go over the information with you, but patients are often eager to see how their tests have come out, and want to know as quickly as possible the main details. Patient portals help solve this issue as well as relieve staff since fewer people will call to inquire about basic information.

Remote Medical Billing
While there are many more different Health IT solutions, those are typically the main 3 that you’ll hear the most about since they all provide almost universally needed solutions.

A solution that many clinics do not realize they could benefit from is remote medical billing services. The Psych Biller has helped many clinics and healthcare administrations outsource their medical coding and medical billing needs so that they can spend less time worrying about claims and more time helping patients.

Contact The Mental Health Billing Utah  today to outsource your medical coding and billing needs!