In addition, the evolution of computers made it more affordable for institutions to transition to an electronic check-in system, replacing traditional paper sign-in sheets.
Patient Check-in is one of these areas of improvement for healthcare organizations motivated by HIPAA, Meaningful Use, and Lean/Six Sigma projects.
The truth is the check-in system separates people signing in from the HIPAA protected conversations between the office staff and patients at the window.
Although defeating the purposes of the check-in, some organizations mitigate this by providing concierge greeters to welcome and assist patients.
By using a welcoming concierge or by making electronic check-in optional, the organization can still benefit from an improved workflow, cater to those who cannot use technology, while keeping a personal touch and a high level of patient service.
If a non-mounted table-top tablet or kiosk is used, theft can be eliminated by putting the devices in close proximity to staff – ideally on the same countertop where the paper sign-in sheet was previously located.
Another added benefit to many newer tablets is the ability to go into lockdown mode, even going as far as capturing GPS info, then reporting that when a connection is available.
However, a properly-sized screen paired with wizard style check-in requiring minimal typing can highly improve the patient acceptance rate.
Complexity - The first thought is to have a kiosk that will make patients verify their personal information, update their medical history, check their insurance, take their co-pay, print a receipt.
With introduction of cloud technology in recent years, healthcare offices are now able to easily manage the patient documentation without need to spend hours in manually scanning the forms and duplicate entries in the system.
Beyond simply asking for a patient's name like paper sign-in sheets traditionally did, the self-service kiosks can gather much more info to facilitate registration.
Changes can be made and verified by the patient rather than staff eliminating common mistakes from typos that ultimately lead to inaccurate data.
In addition to verifying data, focusing on patient safety and infection control can also be managed by asking simple questions like, “Are you a fall risk?” and “Do you have or have you recently had a cough, temperature, or flu-like symptoms?”.
By coupling this with pagers, text alerting, and waiting room displays, patient satisfaction and Hcap scores can have a big impact.
For example, using pagers similar to those used in the restaurant business can allow patients to freely roam the hospital and stay in constant communications with the front desk.
Patient check-in can give healthcare organizations a chance to feed electronic data into their operations with or without a newer EMR.
This provides the fastest service possible while allowing other staff members to optimize their time while waiting for patients to arrive.
When the patient walks into the main entrance of the hospital, a greeter can assist them during the check-in process, at that point, the system can automatically know the services they are here for or the kiosk/staff can gather that info.