Using your data for business performance - Part 2: Patient treatment journeys

How tracking the treatment journey and outcomes can help you to improve your private healthcare business

In order to provide the highest quality of care to your patients, a healthcare practice needs to be able to monitor key aspects of the patient treatment journey, including different treatment methods, duration, and end results. 

Monitoring these statistics will provide invaluable insights into the success of different treatments and the quality of patient care, and you will be able to use these to identify how to improve your healthcare service. 

Where to start

In order to access key data on treatment journeys and outcomes, it is necessary to have software that efficiently stores patient medical data and also provides features such as consultation notes, patient labels, and analytics reports to enable practices to pull specific data easily. 

Without a practice management software with these capabilities, you will find it difficult to accurately track patient care journeys in order to monitor and improve your treatment processes and healthcare service. 

Recording and tracking the treatment journey

The process of tracking patient treatment journeys can be hugely beneficial to improving certain aspects of patient care. With insights into the success, outcomes, and experience of certain treatment methods or medications, your private healthcare clinic will have the data it needs to tailor patient care for better outcomes.

The main tools used to access patient care data and monitor treatment processes are:

Electronic Medical Record (EMR) software

An Electronic Medical Record (EMR) software stores all patient medical history online in one centralised location. EMR software documents previous medical illnesses and treatments and provides a history of medications, scans, labs, and test results, providing a full overview of the patient’s treatment journey.

Furthermore, with practice management software that provides key integrations such as pathology integrations and e-prescription services, all new treatments will automatically be documented in the patient’s EMR. This way, clinicians have a clear view of what treatment their patients are undergoing.

Consultation notes

Consultation notes provide the starting point of the patient’s treatment journey and are used by the clinician to document essential details about a patient’s illness and treatment. From the initial consultation, clinicians can document the ailment or illness of a patient and the subsequent treatment prescribed, whether this be medication, lab tests, therapy, referral, or surgery.

As treatment progresses, clinicians can record how symptoms improve or decline and the patient’s experience. eXroid clinic, a leading haemorrhoid treatment clinic, uses this feature extensively to record the exact location, grade, and type of haemorrhoids suffered by patients, and how these change over time with treatment. 

Labels feature

A labels feature can be a powerful tool for tracking treatment journeys as it allows healthcare practices to perform data reports and easily pull information from their records. Labels can be attached to either a patient or products, such as a ‘diabetes’ for an illness, ‘chemotherapy’ for a treatment process, or medication.

With this tool, clinicians can gain insights into treatment methods across a wide spectrum of criteria, such as all their patients with diabetes, or all patients who have received a specific medication for a certain illness, by running a report for that specific illness or medication and then comparing results.

Determining 'success' and improving your healthcare service

The idea of ‘success’ in healthcare will vary greatly between different healthcare practices depending on the service you offer and the aims of your business. Some practices may be focusing on clinical research alongside providing patient care, and some practices will have different ideas of success in treatment outcomes.

Regardless of the goals of your healthcare practice, tracking and recording patient treatment processes and outcomes will enable you to continuously adapt and improve services to offer the highest level of care.

Patient care

Tracking patient treatment processes provides insights into aspects of the care journey that can have a significant impact on patient care and patient satisfaction. 

Detailed consultation notes recording symptoms of illness and effects of medication can be beneficial for finding the right medication for patients. If some medications cause a high rate of side effects in patients that affect their quality of life, it could be worth considering alternative medication to help ease symptoms. 

It is small insights like these that could have a profound effect on the quality of patient care you offer in your healthcare practice.

Scientific research

Keeping detailed notes on patient treatment and care journeys will provide powerful insights into treatment processes for illness and diseases. This information is not only valuable at a practice level, but could equip you with the necessary tools to become a leading researcher in your chosen field.

Semble’s partner eXroid uses Semble’s consultation notes, diagram features, labels, and reports to become an innovative clinic on the forefront of Haemorrhoid treatment. These features have been fundamental for eXroid in their research and development of their innovative electrotherapy haemorrhoid treatment.

Explore this case study with eXroid for the full story.

Semble’s labels and reports feature also allow you to run reports that search for specific criteria, such as patients with diabetes, or asthma sufferers. Similarly, you could create a ‘discharged’ label and then search this with a specific illness to see how many of your patients with this illness were eventually discharged from care following treatment. 

The Circulation Clinic created labels for ‘active’ and ‘discharged’ patients, as well as for individual clinicians and locations to allow the consultants to quickly and easily pull up their patient lists and check which were still under the clinic’s care. 

It is insights like these that will enable your healthcare practice to adapt its treatment processes for the better. Monitoring treatment outcomes against different medications, patient demographics, and illnesses, will provide insights into the effectiveness of your treatment that will enable you to continually adapt care to provide the highest quality services to patients.

Check out the Semble blog for more tips on building a data-driven healthcare practice!