The healthcare IT market offers two choices when looking for healthcare software solutions:
- Custom Healthcare Software
- Off-the-shelf Software
Furthermore, if you compare the cost of these two software choices the custom healthcare software solutions are comparatively more costlier than off-the-shelf software. However, even before that, the healthcare IT consultant asks you the questions, ‘what are your specific requirements for the software?’ and ‘how long are you wishing to use this software?’
Depending on your answers to these two questions, they suggest the ideal choice for you. Generally, custom healthcare software is often considered a long-term investment, which will help your practice as it grows. However, one of the core aspects of a smooth transition is ongoing support for custom healthcare software.
Software maintenance and software support are some of the aspects that help your healthcare software move towards sustainability. To ensure this, the software support plan includes smooth operations, security, and continued evolution of the custom healthcare software.
But how do you put forth a sustainable software support plan for your custom healthcare software?
In this blog, let’s explore the different aspects of ongoing support for custom healthcare software and how it can help you make the most out of your investment!
Why Ongoing Support Matters?
Before getting started with the deeper intricacies of ongoing software support, let’s first try to understand why ongoing support is so important for custom healthcare software solutions. Here are some of the major reasons why ongoing support matters:
- Maintaining Functionality and Performance: Since the software will deal with a lot of data and functionality that helps your practice, the data flowing through it might contain such information that might result in a decline in performance. Software maintenance and support are required to address such issues as bugs. This will help you understand your custom healthcare software better and help in optimizing the performance of the software while ensuring that each and every function of the software is functioning smoothly, without any hindrance.
- Keeping Up with Security Updates: Just like most software gets updates, your custom healthcare software system will also require updates to address and implement software bug fixes and enhance security. Since cyber attackers are constantly on the lookout for accessing your sensitive information, regular software updates related to security will help you address evolving cyber threats and ensure data security in your custom healthcare software.
- Adapting to Changing Regulations: Apart from that, with a high adoption rate of custom healthcare software, the regulatory landscape is constantly changing. To comply with such changes and make changes in your custom software, software support, and software upgrades are required. This will not only enhance your security practice but also help you easily navigate through the legal and regulatory landscape.
Benefits of a Practice Support Approach
Software maintenance and support have always been an essential part of the healthcare IT landscape. This is because it is not only a necessity but also for the exclusive benefits it brings to your healthcare practice. Here are some of the major benefits of the practice support approach:
- Early Problem Detection and Resolution: A proactive software support approach helps you identify any issues that might be underlying the software. By proactively identifying and addressing them, you can instantly make changes to them, which can have a huge impact on your practice, enhancing it before any issue escalates.
- Improved User Experience: This refers to the users who face any issues while using the software. If you have a huge user base, addressing every issue can be challenging. However, with proactive software support, you can easily identify and perform software bug fixes, which will not only unknowingly address user feedback but also offer a smooth and positive user experience while using the software.
- Reduced Downtime and Costs: Issues can cause disruptions in the process and also in the functionalities of the software. Such issues can be costly for your practice. On the contrary, such issues can be easily addressed by software support and reduce the cost of software downtime, and that is one of the many reasons for the importance of software maintenance and software support.
Building a Comprehensive Support Plan
As of 2024, software maintenance and software support has become an essential part of healthcare IT practices. This has attracted many companies to offer healthcare software support services. However, despite their lucrative offerings, building a comprehensive support plan is extremely necessary. Here are some considerations to give you a heads-up about developing a comprehensive software support plan:
- Define Service Level Agreements (SLAs): During the agreement, establishing clear SLAs is crucially important for the healthcare software support services vendor. The SLAs should outline response time and support coverage so that in case any issues arise, they can be readily addressed and fixed.
- Identify Support Channels and Resources: In case of any issues, a well-defined support channel should be in place, such as direct phone calls, emails, or tickets for raising. This will help you quickly reach out to your vendor in case of an emergency. Apart from that, to temporarily deal with the situation, the healthcare IT vendor should provide readily available resources, such as a guide to mitigate the damage.
- Consider Training and User Support Options: Last but not least, since most of your staff and patients will be using the software, they should be trained about how to access support in case of such inconveniences. Along with that, they should also know about ongoing support options in your plan, which will help you bridge the gaps quickly.
Ongoing Communication and Feedback
While ongoing support for custom healthcare software is required for optimum performance, ongoing communication and feedback between all the parties involved is also crucially important. Let’s have a look at some of the reasons why it is so important for software upgrades and software maintenance:
- Regular Communication with Development Partner: For proper software updates and maintenance, open communication with the development partner is extremely important. This way, you can easily discuss pertaining issues and potential issues that might arise and also emphasize the future needs of the software.
- Encouraging User Feedback: Gather feedback about the functioning of your custom healthcare software from everyone who is using it. Though not everyone would give feedback, the ones who leave can help you easily identify any pertaining issues in your software, which you can address in the next round of your software support and maintenance.
- Collaborative Approach to Ongoing Development: Remember keeping the software functioning efficiently is a collaborative effort. Your practice and the development partner must work together to ensure the software meets the evolving needs to deliver optimum performance and not disrupt the care delivery process.
Conclusion
The importance of software maintenance for your custom healthcare software is the same as that of a custom-made bike. However, unlike the unprecedented challenges that arise during customization, a sustainable support plan for your software can help you make the most of the investment you make with your software support.
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Frequently Asked Questions
- What is included in a typical software maintenance contract?
A typical software maintenance contract outlines the terms and conditions for ongoing support and updates. It covers aspects like contract duration, fees, technical support channels, bug fixes, updates, service levels, termination clauses, and intellectual property rights.
- How often should healthcare software be updated?
Healthcare software should ideally be updated regularly, at least once or twice a year. This ensures optimal performance, security, and adherence to evolving industry standards and regulations. Updates can include bug fixes, new features, and enhanced security measures.
Security Patch Frequency: Critical security patches should be deployed as soon as possible upon release to address vulnerabilities promptly.
- What are the signs that my healthcare software needs maintenance?
Signs your healthcare software needs maintenance: Frequent errors, slow performance, outdated features, security vulnerabilities, integration issues.
- How can I prevent software downtime?
Prevent software downtime by:
- Regular backups and disaster recovery plans.
- Robust monitoring and alerting systems.
- Load testing to identify performance bottlenecks.
- Timely software and hardware updates.
- Redundant systems and failover mechanisms.
- Strong cybersecurity practices.
- What is the cost of software downtime for a healthcare practice?
Software downtime in healthcare is extremely costly, averaging $7,900 per minute. This includes lost revenue, productivity, potential HIPAA fines, and damage to patient care and trust.