Since the emergence of healthcare mobile apps and their integration into medical facilities, rapid advancement is taking place in the entire healthcare sector improving healthcare practices, making patient care better, streamlining processes, and boosting efficiency and controlling cost in a never before way. 

A recent survey indicated that 93% of doctors and practitioners consider that healthcare mobile apps can have a great impact on improving patient care and medical treatment outcomes.

One of the biggest areas of impact of healthcare apps has been the cost of treatment and healthcare administration costs. Particularly, medical facilities and hospitals have been tremendously benefited in reducing the cost through these apps.  According to a survey, mobile healthcare apps for consumers helped in at least a 15%-20% reduction in the days spent in hospitals besides reducing ER visits by at least 30%. 

Here through this blog post, we are going to explain the key ways healthcare mobile apps are going to have an impact on reducing the cost of hospital management and overall healthcare. 

Easier Management Of Chronic Diseases

According to a study carried out by Accenture, a whopping 15%-20% reduction of days spent in hospitals has been found due to mobile app-based chronic disease management. The same study also found that there have been at least 30% fewer ER visits thanks to the use of mobile app-based monitoring. 

According to this data, mHealth apps altogether can help to make the whopping US $23 billion or more saving just by managing the patients suffering from chronic diseases and health conditions such as diabetes and heart diseases. 

As the proliferation of the latest wearable devices and mobile health wearable apps and specialized health apps built by custom healthcare software development company India is gaining momentum, these predictions by Accenture are looking truly realistic and credible.

Doing Away With Non-Emergency ER Visits

Patient management without ER visits thanks to the use of mobile apps is gaining momentum. iTriage, an app available across iPhone, Android, and iPad devices has come up with an efficient patient engagement solution that can be tremendously effective in helping reduce medical costs. 

This app allows patients to keep track of their conditions by using an instant symptom monitor apart from providing the patients with all nearby urgent care facilities, retail clinics, and ER facilities along with details of the comparative visiting costs for each of them. The app already displayed great capability in enhancing efficiency and reducing a considerable amount of cost per patient. 

Helping Patients With Self-Management Of Healthcare 

There have been many mobile healthcare apps that are playing an instrumental role in educating the patients and helping them with measures and procedures to manage chronic conditions with expert tips. 

This self-management of own conditions facilitated by mobile healthcare and health monitoring apps are increasingly playing a great role in reducing the number of hospital visits and the corresponding cost of healthcare. 

Mayo Clinic recently came up with a closely monitored study corresponding to mobile health monitoring apps for patients requiring cardiac rehabilitation. According to the study, a good 20% of the patients who regularly used mobile monitoring apps to record blood pressure, weight, and other vital symptoms on a regular basis actually needed readmission in hospitals. The same study found that 60% of the patients not using mobile health monitoring apps needed readmission in hospitals. 

Enhancing Adherence To Medical Prescriptions 

The non-adherence to medical prescriptions is at least responsible for relapsing of many diseases and worsening of health conditions costing at least $300 billion annually.  At least 50% of the patients suffering from chronic conditions don’t take medications as prescribed by the doctors. 

Now, mobile healthcare apps coming with prescription reminders and well-timed push notifications from the healthcare facility of their choices can help patients adhere to prescriptions more regularly than ever before. It is needless to say that increased adherence to prescription will reduce the cost of healthcare to a great extent. 

Monitoring Aged and Vulnerable Patients 

As the population in many parts of the world is continuously aging creating more cost and responsibility burden on the healthcare sector, using mobile healthcare apps for self-management of patients is being looked upon with hope by healthcare strategists and administrators all over the globe. 

Although previously senior citizens were very slow in adopting the mobile apps for managing their day to day healthcare needs, they are fast adopting and finding app-based maneuvers easier to keep a check on their chronic conditions and for accessing emergency care. 

Healthcare Dashboards For Patients And Doctors 

A medical facility or clinic or hospital should come with two separate dashboards in their healthcare apps, respectively one of the patients and the other for doctors. 

While the patient dashboard will keep the patient profiles, all their medical reports, and respective cost descriptions in an easy to view manner, the other dashboard for the doctors will keep the doctor’s details as well as different service providers and the availability tracker of medical equipment.

Such apps offering easy to manage dashboards comprising all necessary information for the patients and the doctors will help reduce the healthcare cost to a great extent. 

An Easier Way To Generate Medical Reports

Every healthcare facility and medical establishments encounter a lot of difficulties when generating a medical report. This is not just because of the complex procedure but also because of the difficulties in accessing different layers of information about the treatment and healthcare conditions. 

This is where cutting-edge healthcare apps can have a paradigm-shifting impact by streamlining the entire process of generating medical reports. By automating the process of saving all information at a centralized server and by making it accessible to every concerned person with due authentication, mobile healthcare management apps can just enhance efficiency in a never-before manner. 

Since digital medical report cards are managed and maintained through a central server and reduce the need for creating reports time and again, it has a positive impact on cost reduction. Thanks to the medical reports accessed through mobile apps, any new information and changes can be updated quickly and in real-time without needing to create new reports. 

Saving A Lot Of Time

In healthcare, sector time amounts to not just money but it costs lives, and hence fast-paving the processes is not just beneficial from the point of view of cost reduction but it is also important for improving the quality of healthcare and life expectancy of patients. 

Thanks to an advanced healthcare app the data and records of patients can easily be collaborated upon without requiring too much time.  When all medical records and data can easily be accessed with just a single tap in the patient history and registration details, this saves the entire time and effort required for finding the details manually.  

From an easy and least time-consuming generation of medical reports to the streamlined and systematic booking of the patient appointment to treatment schedule planning, in a multitude of ways mobile healthcare apps help saving vital time and thus make a positive impact on the cost front. 

Utilizing Human Resources More Efficiently

One of the major cost factors is the management and allocation of human resources in medical facilities that always seem to be at odds in respect of balancing the need for patient care and available doctors, nurses, and medical technicians. 

With a mobile healthcare app, you can make the allocation of doctors and medical staff in different departments more efficient and thus can save on the time and effort in healthcare management. Apart from ensuring to serve the patients better thus will also help you keep a facility work with the fewer number of staff. This obviously will result in hefty cost savings on human resources. 

Keeping Track Of Healthcare Equipments

Every medical facility and hospital want to remain updated with the latest medical equipment and technologies to provide advanced care to patients. But over time, the healthcare equipment and machines also become outdated requiring up gradation or maintenance. 

This is where a mobile app created expressly for keeping track of the details of all hospital equipment and doctors can play a great role. Such apps will play a great role in helping with the management of medical equipment and tools and ensure better maintenance. 

By ensuring regular and timely maintenance of medical equipment in hospitals and medical facilities these apps can help save a lot of costs incurred through the new purchases and replacement. 

Mobile App For Medical Tests 

It is already common knowledge that there are too many apps to help you keep track of your pulse rate, heart rate, and common signs. The medical apps connected with some market-available devices can also help patients keep track of their blood sugar, blood pressure, and more critical health signs. 

When consulting a doctor remotely online or through a mobile app, patients can simply update these data and reports and take consultancy from the doctors. Thanks to self-health monitoring apps and mobile app-based tests of vital signs, remote healthcare has received a big boost resulting in a positive impact on the cost of healthcare. 

Conclusion 

Healthcare apps have already transformed the functioning of hospitals and medical facilities in many parts of the world. Apart from automating many processes and improving medical care, healthcare apps played a great role in reducing hospital management costs to a great extent.