Practice Management Systems - What You Should Know about It?

In 2017, the global practice management systems market valued at $9.3 billion, and it is expected to attain a CAGR of 9.7% during the forecast period (2018–2023). The growth would be due to the development and sale of value-added services, desire to manage healthcare costs, ever-evolving scenario in hospital settings, and improvement in healthcare infrastructure and its digitalization. Software and solutions that help in managing the day-to-day operations in healthcare centers are referred to as practice management systems.

They enable the end users to maintain patient-related information such as appointment schedules, carry out billing tasks, maintain lists of insurance payers, and generate reports. Patient engagement solutions, e-prescriptions, and electronic health records (EHR) are a few examples of practice management systems. The involvement of multiple departments, working together, in the healthcare industry demands a centralized procedure to help streamline the whole process and make it more time saving and cost-effective.

Practice management systems help in catering to the demands of patients for a faster and less cumbersome healthcare process. Such systems include software for diagnostic, financial, reporting, and administrative purposes. The inclusion of cloud computing is expected to provide patients with an easy retrieval facility for their health records as per their convenience and also enhance information sharing among various departments. Hence, the practice management systems market is expected to grow in the coming years owing to the centralization of healthcare facilities.

The development of new business models has brought a shift in the working of healthcare institutions. For instance, the American Hospital Association (AHA) published a data in 2018 that said that out of the more than 5,500 hospitals in the U.S., about 2,500 were non-profit organizations. The increasing number of small and mid-size hospitals across the U.S. is expected to drive the demand for practice management systems. The practice management systems market is anticipated to grow owing to the digitalization and centralization of back-end processes in healthcare settings.

Coming to the report, the segments of the market are geography, delivery mode, product, end user, and component. Based on product, the categories are standalone and integrated systems, of which, in 2017, the integrated category led the practice management systems market. The advantages of integrated systems include administrative and clinical efficiency, offered through a single interface, which enables the caregivers to spend more time with patients. This is why the category is expected to grow at a higher CAGR of 10.1% during the forecast period.

Hence, it is clear that digitization in healthcare would be among the primary drivers for the market.