Organisations in all sectors are currently looking at how they can implement emerging technologies that will increase efficiencies and generally result in an improved service or process. The healthcare sector is among those and whilst many institutions have made great progress in their digital transformation journey, they mustn’t ignore the technologies that improve the patient journey says visitor journey management expert Qmatic.
“With an increasingly ageing population, the NHS is under heightened pressures and demand for healthcare is rising. This means that more and more people are visiting hospitals, clinics, outpatient centres and GP surgeries than ever before, and it’s therefore never been more important for these institutions to be able to easily manage the flow of patients,” says Vanessa Walmsley, MD at Qmatic UK.
“Whilst healthcare institutions should be looking at the exciting technologies that are dominating headlines currently, such as artificial intelligence, automation and IoT, they also need to think more broadly about the technologies that will have extremely effective outcomes on day-to-day processes.”
Patient journey management technology enables healthcare institutions to create a seamless patient journey, improving the speed and quality of service, fulfilling employees, lowering patient anxiety and securing the bottom line by increasing patient volume.
Case study
Qmatic recently worked with St Thomas and Kings College Hospitals to deliver solutions that streamline the arrival, queuing, waiting and calling to the consulting rooms of walk in patients.
The Kings College Hospital Liver outpatient centre was looking to implement a low-cost solution that could be quickly installed and would not require IT infrastructure changes or significant involvement from the buildings and property teams.
For this reason, Qmatic Solo was implemented, a simple yet powerful queue management solution for improving operational efficiency. This solution enables patients to check-in via a self-service terminal or through the reception team and receive a ticket. The system is also able to record mobile numbers, so that if there are long waits, patients are able to leave the department and return once they have been notified by SMS.
This relieves any confusion about the process and whilst waiting, patients are kept informed via a digital media screen, which can also inform the patient where to go when it is their turn to be served. For staff, the solution enables them to be notified via a mobile device when a patient arrives and can call them to the right place using the device too.
Through the Qmatic Solo solution, St Thomas and Kings College Hospital, Liver Outpatients has seen dramatic improvements for the both the patients and the staff. Patients generally feel more satisfied as they are kept informed whilst they wait for a consultation, they feel they are queued fairly and that they are in a process that they clearly understand.
In addition, clinical staff are able to monitor the number of patients waiting to be seen without leaving their consulting rooms, they’re able to call patients without leaving their desk and management teams are able to view live and historic reports which detail the patient footfall, waiting time and consultation time averages. Together, these result in reduced patient anxiety, increased staff satisfaction and in efficiency gains.
