Galen Health
Galen Health
During the Cycle 1 review, Galen was rated in our User Survey as the most affordable and easiest system to get started when embarking on their HealthierSG journey. However, our User Survey in the Cycle 2 review has highlighted a significant shift in responses, with some users providing feedback that the system has become less user-friendly and is experiencing more stability issues. Our CMS Sutra team member has field-tested the system to have a better understanding of this shift in opinion. In general, Galen is a system that comes with a modern and aesthetically pleasing user interface that is easy for beginners to pick up quickly (due its intuitive design). However, Galen may not have adequately tackled some technical aspects of the new HealthierSG features in the Cycle 2 review, and several issues have been reported regarding recurring bugs and disruptions.
Ease of Use, NEHR and Meeting Grant Requirements
Galen seems to have improved on some areas from the Cycle 1 review, adding in a new 2FA SMS verification system. Useful graphs like the Height & Weight for child national growth percentiles have also been exceptionally helpful for GP users. Galen’s strength lies in its visually pleasing user interface which was assessed by our reviewers as user-friendly and modern-looking. This is exemplified by the formatting of the new HealthierSG price difference calculator. The new function was favorably rated in our user survey with 84.6% of respondents rating this feature 3 stars and above. Users of Galen also reported very high success rates with meeting Grant Requirements following a series of positive changes to the systems.
However, there is still much to work on with the new and existing features. Like many CMSes, there is no true integration with NEHR and NIR, there are no direct contact switches within Galen CMS and users must open a separate browser tab to access the NEHR and NIR portals to access data.
Health Plan, Inventory and HealthierSG Whitelist Drugs
In terms of Health Plan generation, users reported a particular recurring bug in which the Health Plan and vaccination data of preceding patients are superimposed on the current patient. While this bug can be overcome by refreshing the system, it is the expressed wish of our reviewers that a more permanent fix can be deployed.
76.9%% of users in our User Survey have scored a rating of 1 star on Galen CMS’s ability to apply price caps to whitelisted drugs. One CMS Sutra reviewer has mentioned that the price caps are at times not updated which potentially affects bill sizes, this is a crucial area as clinics usually must absorb these losses on the medication. The ALPS delivery system on the other hand works very well and functions smoothly with patients receiving drugs on time as shared by our reviewer. The CMS Sutra team wishes for all CMSes to be updated on latest whitelist drug prices to prevent clinics from taking in additional losses holding whitelisted drugs.
System Stability, User Support and Perceived Value
In our User Survey, Galen users generally had mixed views on its ability to successfully obtain claims for annual service fees and incentives, with approximately half of the respondents rating the CMS as 2 stars and the remaining half rating it as 3 stars or more in this aspect. Stability is a major bugbear for Galen with many users also reporting the lack of auto-saving and the occasional hanging / freezing of the CMS with data loss as a major pain point. Our CMS reviewers mentioned that there have been instances of missing data when relogging, as well as lab results not flowing into NEHR, which would be a great inconvenience for patient tracking, apart from the lack of a contact switch to NEHR directly. Stability of the system remains an issue and a key aspect that we hope the Galen team can continue to work on.
Summary
The Galen workflow remains the quickest CMS system to adopt for clinics looking to transition from traditional methods of records keeping while serving the HealthierSG functions. We do hope to see progress and improvements in the HealthierSG features as well as the efforts made between CMS Sutra Cycle 1 to Cycle 2, while managing the standards for the upcoming HealthierSG requirements to stay competitive in the SmartCMS market.
To learn more or book a demo, head over to https://galenhealth.io/
