Understanding the Healthcare Domain and a Guide to Healthcare Application Testing:
Today’s article is going to be all about healthcare- domain/business information, components, what to test and how to test.
This two-part article series is useful for anyone who wants to explore and enter into a different domain for testing, learn and understand healthcare application workflow and testing process.
In short, this article will be your first step and a guide on your healthcare knowledge quest. We will also provide test scenarios for different applications under the Healthcare domain.
To excel in testing, domain knowledge is the key. So, we are going to learn about the client’s business flow now.
Table of Contents:
Healthcare Domain – An Introduction
Health Care or Health Insurance is similar to general insurance. As you know, in any insurance, the insurer (Insurance company) will provide the plans and the customer (Subscriber or Policyholder) will buy the policy of his desired plan. The insurer will receive the premium amount from the policyholders and the policyholders will get reimbursements from the insurer for the valid claims they have submitted.
The same happens in healthcare insurance but in addition to the insurer and policyholder, there are other major contributors such as providers, TPA (Third Party Administrator), brokers, etc.
We will now look at each of the major contributors in detail:
#1) Insurer: An entity that creates a plan, sells the policy, and reimburses the policyholder or provider for submitted valid claims.
#2) Policy Holder: A person or entity who buys a policy from an insurer or broker, pays a premium to the insurer and sometimes submits a claim.
#3) Provider: A person or entity that provides healthcare services to the policyholder and their dependents and either receives payment for the services from the policyholder or the insurer by submitting a claim.
#4) TPA: A person or entity that manages the claims of the policyholder or provider and receives payment for the management from the respective contributor.
#5) Broker: As you have guessed, he is an agent who sells the policy to the customers on behalf of the insurer and receives a commission in return from the Insurer.
For example, we can understand the basic function of contributors from the below example.
Mr. Enosh bought a health care policy that covers general physician consultation and vision problems from Mr. Ponnar and pays a premium for the same to a healthcare company.
Once Mr. Enosh was sick and consulted the Physician Mr. Sabari for recovery, Sabari provided a prescription to Enosh and submits a claim for the consultation to HealthCorp Company and receives the reimbursement. Mr. Ponnar receives a commission from HealthCorp Company for the payment of premium by Mr. Enosh.
In the above example, ‘General Physician Consultation’ and ‘Vision Problems’ are the benefits of the health plan, Mr. Enosh is the policyholder, Mr. Ponnar is the broker, HealthCorp Company is the insurer and Mr. Sabari is the provider.
To clearly understand the difference between a policy and a plan, think of a plan as a class and a policy as an object (an instance of the class). A policy can be categorized as an individual policy or a group policy based on the type of beneficiaries it covers.
Individual Policy: An individual will be the policyholder; both the individual and his/her dependents will enjoy the benefits of the health plan. Here the individual pays the premium.
Group Policy: An entity (generally an employer) will be the policyholder, and the members (employees) of the entity and their dependents will enjoy the benefits of the health plan. Here the entity pays the premium.
For example, an example to have a clear idea of group policy is as follows,
MotoCorp Company buys a policy from HealthCorp Company for its employees and their family. Their claims are managed by EasyClaim Company. Here MotoCorp Company is the policyholder, HealthCorp Company is the Insurer and EasyClaim Company is the TPA.
Further Reading => List of the TOP EMR & EHR Software to Look For
How To Test a Healthcare Application?
Before testing an application, we should be aware of the healthcare industry workflow. The previous topic just gives an introduction to managed health care, more details are available here.
An Insurer needs different applications to manage the following:
- Provider data
- Member Data
- Premium Billing/Payment
- Broker data
- Claims entry/validation
- Broker commission calculation/payment
Further Reading => TOP Healthcare Software Testing Services to Look For
Generally, a Healthcare application will have the following list of systems:
- Member system: To maintain policyholder data, various plans with their list of benefits and generate premium bills for the policyholder based on their plans
- Provider system: To maintain provider data
- Broker system: To maintain broker data and calculate commissions
- Claims system: For claim entry and validation
- Finance system: To make the necessary payment to provider/member/broker
- Member portal: To display the policyholder information, make premium payments and raise a request for change information for policyholders
- Provider Portal: To display provider information and raise a request for change information for providers
- Broker Portal: to display broker information and raise a request to change information for brokers
This might not be an exhaustive list. But this is the list to the best of my knowledge. Also, all applications might not even be used. Sometimes, a few of these applications are merged to make another, more complex application- other times, these are stand-alone systems.
For example, the Provider system can be part of the Member system in some healthcare applications. By Healthcare application, I mean a set of systems maintained by an Insurer to facilitate their customers and partners.
Health Care Application Testing Workflow
The unique feature of the Health Care system is that these applications cannot be tested in any order we like. There is a certain workflow to be followed:
- For a member/policyholder to be enrolled in a health plan he/she needs to be assigned to a provider (Primary Care Physician) or a provider network, so there should be a way for the member system to validate the assigned provider. Either the member system connects to the provider system or a data feed should periodically send to member system from the provider system. Therefore, the provider system should be tested and ready to use before testing the member system.
- A claim should consist of provider ID and member ID in addition to other details. The claims system should validate both the member and provider to validate the claim, so both the member and provider systems should be tested and ready to use before testing the claims system.
- The finance system needs to have data from a member, provider, claim, and broker systems to write checks or make EFT payments to the respective person or entity.
- Provider and broker systems are stand-alone.
- Portals should be tested last since they need data from the other applications.
Now, that’s not the order in which the systems in a Healthcare application should be tested.
In the meantime, if you have any questions or comments or need any help in understanding the Health Care domain better, please let me know. Stay tuned for the next article in the series.
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Nice article sir..
can i get the some examples of websites those are in health care domain ?
please sir
This is good and important topic, I will be waiting for part 2.
Thanks for the post
I want to know how healthcare industries will use software testing technique?
I was waiting to understand Health Care Domain. Thanks for the post.
I will be waiting for part 2
Will u please provide 2nd part of this
Kindly let me know the information about Gym products. i thought even Gym facility comes under Health Domain.kindly rectify ……Help me out with the application,test cases, and how to automate it.
Hi guys ,can you tell me what will the endpoints in API’S for health care domain and what is key points in healthcare domain in a simple manner asking from interview purpose plz reply fast.
I NEED A MANUAL TESTING LIVE PROJECTS ON INSURANCE DOMAIN AND SUPERB….POST…THKS
Please post a project about Banking domain asap.
How to test Banking application.
Thank you for the post , waiting for Part 2.
@ Prasad Bhavanashi
Hope you have read the second part, to explain the points you have mentioned takes much time. The main aim of this article is to give an introduction to health care domain and show a way to test the end to end flow of a health care application.
Sorry that I haven’t been detail but you can always go through the book that was mentioned in the article for more details.
Thanks
Hi,
In this article you have talked about insurance application, but there many more application in Health care. so pleas provide some generic information on health care
@ all – thanks all for your comments and huge support.
The first article was mainly to introduce you to the healthcare domain (health insurance as an example). In second part we will explain how to test this application with test scenarios.
Also we got your inputs and soon we will provide more domain info (downloadable) on Healthcare, BFSI and other domains.
very useful and explain by flow of process in health care domain. great presentation..Hope so with continous sharing of knowledge..@ Thanks vairavan
In healthcare there are different areas to be tested.
could be in insurance are or hospital are(inpatient,Outpatient ,observation and ER)
the insurance is used in different ways and billing is also done in different ways.
There are Various applications used as Epic,Allscript,Aurora,meditech etc.Each applications are used for different purposes.While you are using this applications,you need to have the understanding of basic billing and claims.Primary and secondary insurances.The HCPC codes how many digits and the HIPPA regulations.Medicare and medicaid understanding and how its being used as a Medicare advantage plan
This is mainly Healthcare insurance ….This is not healthcare applications..
My best Wishes and thanks for provided valuable information in part1 it self to all of them .
Even me also waiting for 2 nd part 🙂
I hope it will cover ,
1. Mediclaim process
2.HMO (Health Maintenance Organisation )
3.PCP (Primary care Phycian)
4. PPO (Preffered provider organisation)process
5.HSA (Health Savings account)
6. CoPay,Co insurance.
7. COmplete Claim process (Its a big subject )
Thanks,
Prasad Bhavanasi
Health care domain and Health Insurance or policy is different
Health insurance or policy related details are will come under Insurance related domain.
Health care is a full and full hospital related applications
Inpatient ,out patient Emergency dept and clinic related applications should be avilable
I NEED A MANUAL TESTING LIVE PROJECTS ON Health care project.
Please share if anyone has to maheshkumar031@gmail.com
please send me also
This very help for who have less or no knowledge about health care domain. We all are waiting for the part -2 with more examples for web & mobile application. Nice work. Lots of thanks
This is basically about health insurance but what about various application used for health care services & various health care app.
Any details on testing those type of health care application?
Can you please provide an understanding on testing on portfolio management project??
Thank you
@ Manoker – Agree, we have taken Health insurance domain application as an example to get started in this domain!
It is a nice article. Please keep on writing. Thanks !!
Hi sir.This is suresh Reddy. Thanks for nice presentation.i got some knowledge after reading this part1.will wait for your part2 and future other domain . Thanks.
Very good article
is there anyone can help me how to write this project for the resume.Help will be appreciated.
Very good article….
waiting for part 2…
hi Guys,
can you explain any one healthcare domain modules in Automation Testing.
Thanks for giving an idea about the Health Insurance Domain testing. Waiting for part 2….hope it will cover Health Care Domain (Hospital related) also.
Thanks
Thank you very very much. Its realy very clear to understand.
I am working for US Health Care Services in Insurance claims processing , Please provide me more information and regular updates to my mail Id …Thanks
Superb! Thanks for accepting my request to cover article on healthcare.
Waiting for the second part!
Very good article. Expecting more in part 2
Quite an informative master piece. May i have a manual live project for banking and health application. My Email Id mhlangapardy@yahoo.com
wow!!! This was awesome..very clear..can you provide the same structure of article with banking domain..i m intrested to know about that..anyways great
hi if u any has a live project on insurance domain please forward it to my email id pankajkumar357@gmail.com
Hi i need sample project for testing ..with testing process overall..for putting in my project in resume
Most Interesting !!! waiting for part 2 !!! Thank you
Well Said. Healthcare is not ONLY about Insurance
I’m working as test Engg with an EHR software which don’t have detailed functionality of providers/brokers.We are having modules like IP,OP,ER.Please include these workflows too.
@Sameer and @ Anuradha,
Thanks for the comments. We will keep you posted on the date of publish of the second part of this article.
I need help in understanding the Health Care domain better.
thx
Very informative.Can u please provide articles on MR Reporting System (Medical Representative) ?
Nice information , I would request to publish article on SAP functional (Finance , HR ect) as SAP is more complicated and interesting to know.
Guys you can refer this video which can clear your doubts that how Health Care applications are working but this video will tell you the Billing part so refer and share the comment i’ll try to search and provide more on my next visit.
Best Of Luck
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9LiupMWVBs
I am a medical biller and hope to land a job in this domain as I feel I know it pretty well! Glad to have come across this article
Very informative.Can u please provide articles on Testing BFSI domain ?
I want to know about Banking, Financial services and Insurance (BFSI) domain. How to test BFSI application.
Kindly post asap.
@ All,
Thanks for commenting.