Clinical document integrity is a critical part of work at numerous medical organizations, doctors' practices, and laboratories. Given the prevalence of CDI software solutions in these environments, which package you choose will have a major influence on many aspects of your operation. Consequently, you'll want to select the right CDI software for your business. Here are four ways to get the most from that choice.

Workflow

People often focus on issues like regulatory compliance when choosing CDI software suites. However, there tends to be little differentiation among products because everyone understands the importance of compliance with rules like HIPAA.

Where the big differences often exist is in the development of workflows. Rarely does one person deal with every document from start to finish during a visit or handling a prolonged case. That means the workflow is a big deal because multiple people will need to interact with it as seamlessly as possible. You should be comfortable with how your CDI software solutions allow you to create and save documents, access and share them, and archive materials. The process should also be simple and sensible enough that anyone in your organization can quickly train new hires on the system.

Fast and Accurate Queries

When you're hunting for clinical documents, speed and accuracy are critical features. The software should be able to differentiate minor differences in spellings and provide you options for selecting the best options when a query doesn't yield a perfect match. Also, the system should quickly fetch documents, even if your system contains a huge database of entries from thousands of patients, samples, or subjects.

Reporting

You will want to see reports to get a sense of how your organization is doing. Likewise, reports can often reveal early warnings about emerging patterns. If the fall respiratory disease season is setting in early, for example, a report might give you a heads-up. This can allow you to take appropriate measures, such as enhanced cleaning or limiting the scheduling of patients in the waiting room concurrently. A laboratory can also use the reports to see which types of tests most customers seek so they can make decisions about ordering supplies and equipment.

Synchronization

Finally, all documents need to always be synchronized. If someone makes a change to a document, the CDI software should send you a notification in real time, even if you have it open at the moment. This will reduce the odds of errors and omissions in handling treatments and tests.