Electronic Health Reporter

By Darya Danikovich, IT journalist, Softvelopers.

As the healthcare industry is strongly focused on efficient workflow, mobile apps are what can help doctors and patients interact on the go. According to a survey, 90 percent of medical institutions already use or plan to use mobile apps for patient treatment and/or internal management. With the growing number of hospitals that start to launch mobile apps, there has increased a need to shift away from the one-app-fits-all model to systems that serve to accomplish specific tasks. Urgent care clinics are the first in line to try enhance the efficiency of their work by turning to mobile applications.

To provide preventive care to more patients, most healthcare systems have created retail and urgent care clinics for people to visit and arrange an appointment on the same day. While retail centers provide mostly basic services, for instance, chronic conditions treatment, urgent care clinics deal with more serious cases. Also, such clinics typically have labs and offer X-Ray services. That’s why it is very important to provide these medical centers with appropriate software that will serve the overarching goal – effective patient treatment. So why not use a mobile app to improve the entire workflow? Let’s weigh up all the pros and cons.

Benefits and drawbacks of custom mobile apps for urgent care

If you plan to get a custom mobile app for an urgent care center, thoroughly consider finances, time and energy that you are going to invest in the project. If an app is developed to serve doctors, then all the risks are worth taking. Apps for smartphones and tablets speed up urgent care delivery and help doctors find the fastest solution in code blue situations.

Another matter is getting a mobile app to serve patients. The urgent care market focuses quite narrowly on doctor-on-demand apps for patients. Moreover, most patients turn to urgent care less than 2 times a year. So is the effort justified? Apps may be installed when needed and removed if not needed any more. That’s why it seems reasonable to download an app from the App Store or use a website to get the updated patient information.

What is the best solution for urgent care providers

Though custom mobile apps for urgent care centers may be optional, there is always a strong need in other software. Clinics demand healthcare management information systems (HMIS), custom imaging and visualization apps, patient administration systems, electronic health record (EHR) systems and other medical software to improve patient outcomes and meet the needs of a certain clinic and its staff. Healthcare policy management software can aid the facility in its short- and long-term management goals while considering the stringent regulations and healthcare standards.

Conclusion

Despite the fact that patients turn to urgent care quite infrequently, evidence suggests that such medical centers deliver more timely and convenient care. Although urgent care professionals find a mobile app a great solution, their patients are unlikely to install applications on their smartphones. Nevertheless, other types of custom medical software companies will come in handy to streamline the workflow and enhance care quality