PatientWorks, a patient self-service solutions company, has heard from healthcare providers who are facing staff shortages in their registration and patient intake areas due to the demands of the surge in COVID-19 cases and the work load involved in providing vaccinations to their communities. This critical issue combined with front line staff becoming ill during this time has resulted in a shortage of staff to handle key patient intake activities.
When faced with this challenge, many healthcare providers have turned to patient self-service solutions to automate their patient intake procedures. Now patients can perform the routine intake procedures from anywhere – on their smart phones, PC’s at home, or at self-service kiosks. Patients can receive appointment reminders, check-in for appointments, wait in their cars, verify demographic data, sign consent forms, make payments for services, and be directed to the facility or service area inside the facility. This allows staff to handle more patients while reducing the physical interactions between patients and staff members.
Innovations in technology allow healthcare providers to provide their patients with new solutions that allow them the convenience of checking in from anywhere and the safety of reducing contacts during the process. Patients have become used to using their smart phones for shopping, grocery delivery, curbside pickup, and communicating with their friends and relatives during a period of physical isolation. Therefore, providing a solution that allows the patients to use their phones to check in for appointments fits with the standard methods people are now using to do business and communicate.
The solutions allow patients to easily and quickly communicate with the healthcare staff via email or text rather than being lost in a phone call directory and leaving voice mail messages. Patient satisfaction is improved and the efficiency of staff and providers is greatly improved.
Seamlessly integrated with hospital information systems and practice management systems, these solutions improve the accuracy of data collected from the patient while reducing the clerical effort of staff in obtaining the data and forms during the intake process.
If you are having staffing issues and need your key staff in other areas, check out patient self-service solutions to automate the intake process and give your patients a faster way to register and be served.