
When it comes to our heathcare, nothing stands still or stays the same for too long—and the same goes for the policies that regulate the operation of those facilities. Add that to the fact that more than ever before, hospitals are taking a collaborative approach in their work to ensure efficiency and a cohesive workflow, and you come to understand how crucial it is to be able to collaborate on documents with colleagues in real-time.
Often times, managing policies and procedures in healthcare require policy managers to take on several responsibilities, including author, reviewer, approver, and manager or owner. Each of these people may hold one or a multiple of these roles. Being able to work collaboratively in real-time makes that job easier and more effective – saving a lot of time and headache.
Why is Healthcare Policy In-Line Editing Important?
When it comes to document control management, in-line editing is the way of the future. Without it, healthcare facilities would be forced to manually download and re-upload documents. This would mean, whenever there is a new healthcare policy that needs to be created or updated, each person working on the document would have to download the policy (off of wherever it is currently stored), make the changes, and then re-upload it back to its original storage place. This creates a lot of confusion among the multiple people working on editing the healthcare policy for two main reasons:
1. The other members of the team are unaware of what changes were made by the others (ie. one person could change a name, and another could change it back thinking this was incorrect). It eliminates collaboration that is crucial when working on policies and procedures within the healthcare space.
2. It creates multiple versions of the same document, which makes it difficult to have one merged copy and could lead to a greater risk of human error, like accidentally using an older version of the healthcare policy. This is worrisome not only for the healthcare workers that will be working off of old information but for the entire hospital or healthcare facility because it would be considered non-compliant according to HIPAA rules and regulations.
Having an editing feature that allows authors and editors to work in real-time is becoming extremely necessary in healthcare because of the huge security and privacy breach implications of the alternative.
Click below to listen to the audio clip of Dr. Kumar discussing this key healthcare policy feature.
Want to learn more about healthcare policy management? Check out these related articles:
- Best Practices: Policy and Procedure Management
- Ten Steps To Policy Management For Hospitals
- The Importance of Search Functionality in Policy Management Software
About PolicyMedical
PolicyMedical specializes in policy and document management software designed specifically for the healthcare industry. Our signature policy management software application, PolicyManager™, is currently being utilized by over 3,000 healthcare organizations and hospitals throughout the United States and Canada. If you have any questions about our software, feel free to contact us here or request a free no-obligation demo.