Importance of Health Record Management in India.
While the present national health policy of India (NHP, 2017) focuses on building a robust healthcare infrastructure and aims to provide a universal health care coverage for each and every citizen of the country, there are a wide spectrum of challenges, hurdles and scepticism, sprouting on the grass root level, that are yet to be resolved.
One of these primary challenges is the issue of developing smart health record management system in the country which requires severe attention, rigorous policymaking, adequate infrastructure input, skilled manpower, continuous flow of investment and systematic management and hence needs to be attained more sincerely.
Medical record management has an enormous potential that can be leveraged to improve the present condition of the healthcare industry in India. With the help of modern digital electronics and information communication technologies, we can build a fast, secure and instantly accessible healthcare record management system that can help us to extend the reach of health care services and as well as the medical research throughout the length and breadth of the country.
In this following article, we will try to spread some light on this above-mentioned issues, especially on the need of nurturing a self-sufficient, smart and sustainable medical record management systems for the Indian healthcare sector.
What is Medical Record Management.?
Medical Record Management, typically restricted to the medical domain, is nothing but a systematic and organized way of collecting, indexing, compiling and managing of thousands of physical records, documents and clinical paper chats which contain the elaborated history of medical treatments of patients in a single doctor clinic or hospitals.
Objectives Healthcare Record Management:
- To encourage statistical researches on medicine & diseases.
- To facilitate fast, smart and accurate medical diagnosis.
- To widen the scope of medical research and medical audit.
- To mitigate the rate of operational malpractices in hospitals.
- To increase the operational efficiency of medical staffs.
- To spread medical, dental or paramedical education.
- To analyze and scrutinize medical suits and insurance cases.
Advantages of Medical Record Management:
Over the span of the last two decades, the adoption and implementation rate of the advance medical Record management or healthcare record management system has accelerated at a rapid pace. This is simply because of the very facts that it not only offers multiple advantages and benefits over the traditional paper-based medical record storage systems but also contributes to the efficient and smooth functioning of any healthcare institution. Some of the major causes for keeping good medical records are listed as follows.
Tracing the Origins of Diseases & Accurate Diagnosis :
Researches from all around the world have agreed to the fact that the continuous storage and management of the history of individuals of medical records can play a pivotal role for predicting and explaining the origins and causes of numerous critical diseases from which he /she is suffering from.
Besides, this can also help medical service providers such as doctors to make a fast and more accurate diagnosis and provide appropriate medical care facilities with respect to the past medical history and the present health conditions.
Apart from that, a properly maintained healthcare record storage system or medical data management system can also facilitate instant access to the entire reservoir of patients medical history at any point of time, even when the patient is not in a condition of sharing any details.
Higher Operational Efficiency and Increased Productivity:
Almost all of the medical and healthcare institutions in India generates millions of paper-based records on an everyday basis. Such a humongous stockpile of physical records are vulnerable to various natural calamities such as fire, moisture, and pests and can also be lost, stolen and manipulated by various mischievous means.
Maintaining an advance medical records storage system would not only nullify these above mentioned disastrous possibilities but at the same time, would also increase the operational efficiency and productivity of any medical clinic or hospitals.
Urban Space is a Critical Issue, Costing in Millions:
In order to store and maintain thousands of physical records in a highly secure manner, first, you need to build or rent a big storage room. But here in India, most of the trustworthy health care institutions, medical colleges and hospitals are being operated from urban areas where the average value of purchasing or renting a certain area of urban space is unnecessarily high. As a result, it would be very much beneficial for medical service providers to adopt a smartly designed medical records management system which is non-physical, easy to operate, instantly accessible and cost-effective in nature.
Ease of Surveilling the Overall Health of the Nation:
A Well-planned and smartly developed healthcare document management facilities can be extremely helpful, especially for the early identification and assessment of severely communicable viral diseases and chronic diseases which can potentially create mass epidemic or major threats to public health. This can be further leveraged for spreading quick health alerts.
However, developing a self-regulated record and document management system is not that easy. It requires extensive professional experience, skilled manpower, substantial storage-space and extra investment which further makes it complicated and more difficult for a single individual or even for an inexperienced organization. And perhaps that is why more and more healthcare service providers are seeking the help from third-party record management companies who are capable enough to eliminate this Extra burden.
Securus Record management Pvt. Ltd. One of the most trusted data and information management company in Delhi. Just be a part of our nation-wide record and document management initiatives and make your office free of those huge stoke pile of medical records.
Smooth and Optimal Functioning of Health Insurance Sectors:
Despite having huge potential for health insurance market in India, only 14% of Indian Households(Mostly Urban) do enjoy proper health insurance coverage. Besides the number of health insurance providers is quite low which is approximately more or less than 16. This is a grave situation, a detrimental factor to India’s grand vision of providing universal healthcare coverage facilities in future.
Medical & health records management can be used as a very helpful tool in this regard. It can help medical insurance providers to design their products and services more appealing and satisfying, enable them to optimize their premium rates and can even help medical insurance companies to assess the actual amount of risks involved in the insurance pool.
Apart from that, a smartly designed and well performing medical records storage system can help insurance providers and policyholders to boost up the operational procedures involved in billing and processing of insurance claims while maximizing the competitiveness of the degrading health insurance market.
Author:
The author is heading the content marketing division of Securus Record management Pvt Ltd, a well reputed record and document management company in Delhi NCR which provides a wide range of data and document storage solutions for all kinds of organizations, institutions and industries including healthcare, education, infrastructure, banking and finance, NGOs, audit firms and many more. For further details kindly call us +91-11-43922222 and Request Demo: