We talk often about businesses and their overabundance of data, and how an ERP can help organize and centralize all that data. But other industries outside of what we might think of when we hear the word “business”—offices and cubicles and teams that sell some sort of product, commodity, or service—also generate an overabundance of valuable and highly confidential data. Like healthcare. 

A single patient can generate up to 80 megabytes of medical data per year, including electronic records and clinical imaging. Take that 80 MB and multiply it by several thousand and you’ll come close to the amount of data a major healthcare operator like a hospital or community health center may generate in a year. On top of that, there’s an additional accumulation of nearly 50 petabytes of medical and operational data—financial information, healthcare staff records, medical instrument turnover, pharma inventories, and more. 

That’s a lot of data.

Just like any other organization, healthcare business data accumulates and is stored in disparate solutions creating data silos that throw up roadblocks to cross-departmental collaboration and analytics. And that’s where hospitals and ERP providers both have realized that adopting an ERP can help with productive data exchange and transformation. 

In fact, at the most recent SuiteWorld event, NetSuite’s annual conference and tradeshow, leaders revealed in the keynote session that NetSuite plans to soon have editions of their ERP with functionality, roles, and dashboards tailored to three additional industries. One of which is healthcare. The healthcare ERP edition of NetSuite will also include a compliance-focused dashboard that protects the sensitivity of patient information. 

The Benefits of A Healthcare ERP

If you’ve never thought about using an ERP in your healthcare facility before, you might be wondering what it could be used for. Overall, a healthcare ERP can be key for helping improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance patient care with streamlined operations and real-time data and insights. Here are some of the specifics of how it will do that.

Patient Management
A healthcare ERP will help manage patient data, appointments, medical history, and other related information. This points back to improving patient care and assisting providers in making informed decisions.

Electronic Health Records (EHR)
Several healthcare ERPs come with built-in EHR capabilities for storing and accessing patient information electronically. Centralizing the EHR can contribute to improving the accuracy and accessibility of the records, while also reducing paperwork and administrative burden.

Financial Management
Financial operations can also be managed within a healthcare ERP, providing support for billing, payment processing, and revenue management. This helps providers improve financial transparency and accuracy while also streamlining financial workflows.

Inventory Management
Healthcare organizations have a lot to keep track of between medications and care supplies. A healthcare ERP can help them oversee inventory to make sure the right resources are available at the right time, reducing waste and even optimizing supply chain operations.

Compliance and Regulatory Requirements
Healthcare must comply with multiple privacy requirements, such as HIPAA, GDPR, and multiple others. Healthcare ERPs can be set up to support these requirements to reduce the risk of penalties and/or legal issues. 

How to Prepare

It’s easy to see how a healthcare ERP can increase productivity and efficiency; introduce interconnection between departments, suppliers, and vendors, and provide storage for data-driven insights. If your organization is looking to implement its first healthcare ERP, there are a few things you should be ready for up front.

1. Cost: Build a budget that includes the expense of ERP consultants, server providers, in-house IT specialists, and software implementation.
2. Maintenance: As technology progresses, your ERP must be kept up to date and/or even enhanced to maintain not only compatibility with your facility, but also privacy regulations.
3. Training and education: Employees will need to learn how to use this new system, as well as be kept informed when any new tools or functions are added.

When it comes to actually implementing your healthcare ERP, we recommend checking out our article on The Benefits of Implementing A Standard ERP.

Extend Your Healthcare ERP through Integration

As you implement your healthcare ERP, you’ll find it beneficial to integrate the system with other critical systems to help consolidate information and keep your ERP the single source of truth you need. That’s where integration apps like CloudExtend come into play. 

We were so excited to hear about NetSuite’s venture into the healthcare ERP segment because CloudExtend provides Built For NetSuite integration apps that further enhance your experience with the software by directly integrating NetSuite and Excel. Want to know why that matters? Many organizations still run their financial reporting and analysis in Excel due to how they need to combine data from key solutions. Also, uploads to NetSuite using the native UI involve a CSV file, commonly created in—you guessed it—Excel. 

So we thought: Why not make it easier for users to work where they want to work (Excel) while still protecting the value and accuracy of the data flowing in and out of NetSuite? With CloudExtend Excel for NetSuite, users can access and join multiple saved searches from NetSuite right in Excel without the need to download and manually manipulate data. Build the report once and set it to refresh on a schedule or on-demand so you always have the most accurate information. Or if you’re ready to upload data to NetSuite, you can bypass the native UI for a faster upsert directly from within Excel, no CSV file required. Plus, you can upload as many as 10,000 lines at one time—and it takes only minutes, with instant data validation. 

Whether you’re just starting your healthcare ERP journey or have been traveling the road for a while, it’s never too late to up your game and save your team valuable time—as much as 1,000 hours per year!—with the help of CloudExtend’s NetSuite integrations. 

But don’t take our word for it. Try it for yourself for FREE for 14 days, no credit card required.