The pandemic is accelerating the adoption of newer, safer and more efficient technologies to change how patients interact in hospital lobbies, registration desks and waiting rooms. The days of endless paperwork and clipboards is being replaced by self-service interactive kiosks, mobile tablets, e signature and touchless payment technologies. Benefits include better overall customer experience, improved efficiency, and lower costs.
Tablet-based kiosks enable hospitals to move devices wherever needed, whether at the traditional check-in desk, pre-stage areas, or pop-up temporary hospital tents and drive-thru screening sites. The mobility of tablet-based kiosks systems gives the hospitals tremendous flexibility to dynamically reconfigure quickly as needs change with the added benefit of having a solution that can be disinfected between patients.
Tablet-based systems contribute to shorter wait-times for patient check-in. Hospitals and clinics are tracking a patient’s wait-time as part of their overall satisfaction score. Long wait-times dramatically impact customer satisfaction. A recent survey of 5,003 patients analyzed the patient experience. 97% of these patients reported feeling frustrated by increased wait times. 40% of respondents were willing to ultimately change providers to shorten wait times.
Three ways tablet-based solutions can shorten wait times, improve patient satisfaction and enable social distancing.
Stacks of paper documents. Clipboards and endless forms to fill out. Patients come in not feeling well and want to be attended to quickly. This ruins their experience from the outset. In a Becker’s Hospital Review news article, Chris Joyce, Director of Healthcare Solutions with Bottomline Technologies, reports, “When patients are feeling ill or are simply ready to be seen, they want the quickest, most efficient way to input information necessary for their visit.” “Paper registration forms can be frustrating for hospital staff, too. Making sure they are filled out completely, scanning them, manually entering the data into the EMR ... dealing with these types of forms is a time and labor-intensive process that is prone to error and takes valuable time away from patients. So why are we still using paper forms, especially when there's a better way?” These forms feel very repetitive, asking the same questions from previous visits. Modern hospitals are eliminating this frustrating process with electronic, self-service tablet-based kiosk solutions.
Insurance ID, coverage and required co-pay details comes next. Manual scanning and entry of insurance cards is time consuming, prone to error and tedious. A recent Xtelligent Healthcare Media news article reported the average wait time is 18 minutes, with some wait times averaging as much as 29 minutes. Implementing patient check in kiosks and automated scanning technologies, insurance ID data entry and validation can be faster and far more efficient.
It is still very common to see hospitals, clinics and doctor’s offices with large archives full of paper-based medical records. Hundreds, if not thousands of file folders to be managed, organized, and tracked. A patient checking in can experience check-in delays simply due to searching for misfiled paper-based records. Chris Joyce agrees and claims, “Scanning, barcoding and data entry consume a lot of your time when using paper forms.” There is a risk of losing important records when transferring between patient and caregiver. Records can be easily misplaced, lost or destroyed due to acts of nature like fire or floods.
Healthcare administrators are seeking tablet-based solutions because they streamline workflow, eliminate the use of paper, decrease check-in time and support social distancing. As data entry is integrated and e-records are automatically updated, the patient simply completes self-check in and verifies auto-populated fields.
Tablet-based applications can be integrated into billing systems by automatically recognizing a patient’s credit card information tied to their account. A patient can verify auto-populated information, make updates and with an e-signature, ensure compliance and completion of healthcare regulations.
A JAMA study recently examined the use of tablet-based solutions to evaluate if they improved efficiencies for medical staff. Out of 115 medical staff participating in the study, 78% reported the use of tablets helped create a more efficient workspace. The study found that tablets provided time savings of about an hour a day. 68% of staff felt patient delays were averted using tablets.
What Patients say about using technology
This survey of 2,053 patients experience using new medical technologies such as tablet solutions cited the following benefits:
Tablet-based solutions enable a far more modern, efficient and smoother check-in process, allow for social distancing, support disinfection protocols and streamline the workspace in both hospitals and clinics.
MTI can help you with easy-to-deploy tablet-based kiosks. Ask about our special discounted pricing for the Enterprise Tablet Lineup supporting Aava Mobile, Microsoft Surface, Zebra or Apple tablets for healthcare applications like patient registration. Please contact us at [email protected] to learn how our offerings can take patient experience to a new level.
