With the number of options for medical care software, mobile apps, portals, etc., growing year over year, HME providers are commonly faced with the challenge of communicating with another provider or referral source that uses an entirely different software system. The key to overcoming this hurdle? Software integrations.
Integrations can tell your system how to communicate with other types of software. And this all happens “behind-the-scenes,” without any additional effort or technology know-how required from your team. It can be helpful to think of integrations as a “go-between” capable of translating messages, documentation, and notifications into the correct format for another provider’s software system. This transfer of information between platforms is also known as interoperability, and you can learn more about the importance of interoperability in healthcare here.
Incorporating these integrations can allow you to:
- Receive referrals from any software platform while facilitating a seamless, consistent experience for providers and referral sources.
- Share information, updates, and documentation with other providers on a patient’s care team.
- Keep costs down by eliminating the extra work required to reformat, rewrite, or manually follow-up on information sent to a provider or care team member using a different software platform.
If you don’t know which integrations you need for your business, ask your software provider to help you identify which would be the most beneficial for your patient base and frequent care collaborators. To get an idea of what’s out there, you can find a list of popular integrations available from Brightree here.