Strategies for Growing Ancillary Services by Using Modern Digital Solutions

Most hospital leaders know this truth: technology doesn’t fail, communication does. You can buy every module on the market, but if departments can’t talk to one another, nothing changes.

By fixing this issue, we were able to orchestrate the incredible growth of a hospital's ancillary departments on the Agimat Health platform by:

+3,000% growth!

What we’ve seen across hundreds of clinical operations is simple: communication inefficiency kills productivity. Labs wait for orders. Diagnostics chase results. Clinics repeat questions. Patients wait. And it's not because people aren’t capable, it's because the systems they rely on weren’t built to connect them.

Why Ancillary Services Stall (and What That Says About Your Systems)

Stop for a second and ask:

• How fast does a lab get accurate orders from the ward?
• How often does radiology have to chase down missing patient identifiers?
• How many manual notes get copied and recopied?

If it feels like a tangle of emails, sticky notes, and phone calls, you’re not alone, and you’re exactly the person that should be reading this.

Modern digital solutions shouldn't just automate tasks, they should fix the communication problems that slow ancillary services and inflate turnaround times.

1. Break Down the Walls Between Departments

The first strategy is simple and foundational: unified internal communication. Your data needs to be collected and presented to the person who needs it most.

A truly connected Hospital Information Management System (HIS) doesn’t just store charts, it should be routing information to the right people intelligently.

• Order status updates flow automatically to labs
• Supply teams see requisitions in real time
• Relevant notifications and alerts reach the right professional without manual intervention

This would eliminate the old ping-pong of calls and emails or passive waiting that slows everything down.

2. Sync Clinical Workflows With Digital Signals

Ancillary services depend on two things:

1. Accurate, complete clinical data
2. Timely updates for next steps

If you have a digital sytem that supports these, then you can expect to unlock efficiencies:

• OPD autoreceive appointment requests and patient context
• Diagnostics teams automatically notified of which rooms to visit
• Departments share a single source of truth to avoid confusion

No more “Did you get that order?” or “Can you see what I see?” Modern hospitals should be enabling more relevant communication, and the right digital workflows shave hours off every case.

3. Leverage Analytics to Understand Where the Friction Really Is

Communication isn’t a generic problem. It’s a pattern of bottlenecks. If you can’t measure it, you can’t fix it. Modern platforms should give you real usage analytics:

• Where do orders stall?
• Which department sends the most incomplete requests?
• Are discharges delayed due to incomplete clinical info?

It's imperative to turn these questions to insights and then into action.

4. Redesign Incentives Around Outcomes, Not Tasks

This isn’t just about technology, it's about people, too. When your communications platform rewards faster results delivery, fewer manual handoffs, and clearer request completion, then everyone starts working smarter. Digital solutions shouldn't just prop up (or obstruct) work, they should be shifting behavior towards improved operations.

Ancillary services don’t grow because of technology, they grow because technology eliminates the drag on people.

When internal communication isn’t a bottleneck:

• Lab processing times shrink
• Diagnostic throughput increases
• Patients see faster diagnoses and better care continuity

And this isn’t wishful thinking — it’s what we see with clients who adopt integrated, communication-centric HIS platforms.

Grow Your Organization with Technology and Intentional Improvements

Modern digital solutions are not optional any more. They are the scaffolding that lets clinical teams operate at peak effectiveness.

If communication is your constraint, then communication-centric systems can become your growth engine. But, technology and the willingness to build better operations go hand in hand. You don’t grow your ancillary services by just adding some new computer program, you grow them by fixing the friction points that hold people back.

Disclaimer: While Agimat Health has succeeded exceptionally for our current users, there's no guarantee it won't have an even bigger impact on your organization.