Right now in the United States, doctor’s offices are packed and patients are experiencing long wait times due to the lack of available medical professionals in the healthcare industry. More and more doctor’s offices, clinics and treatment centers are maximizing staff resources and minimizing wait times by using patient check in kiosks to streamline and accommodate the growing demands.
From the study Wait Times, Patient Satisfaction Scores, and the Perception of Care, “On average, respondents waited about 23 minutes in the waiting room and 15 minutes in the exam room,” (Bleustein, Rothschild, Valen, Valaitis, Schweitzer, and Jones). Combine the two and that means that from the time the patient walks into the doctor’s office to the time the doctor sees the patient, there is a span of about 40 minutes of waiting time.
The longer the patient has to wait to be seen, the lower the patient satisfaction score will be. “49 percent of patients who had a 15-minute wait rated their doctor positively. Yet, only 27 percent of patients who waited for 45 minutes ultimately left a positive physician review,” hitconsultant.net. Not only does a long wait time impact the overall satisfaction rate, but it also impacts the experience the patient has with their doctor. “Negative doctor-patient experiences were also common with long wait times. Patients were more likely to complain of “rude” doctors or “wrong” diagnosis or prescriptions, leading many to succinctly conclude: “Don’t waste your time or money,” hitconsultant.net.
Patient Check In and Satisfaction
When medical offices receive poor ratings it deters new patients and ultimately makes a case for lowered funding and employee layoffs. Keeping patient satisfaction scores high wins prestigious awards, increases the amount of current patients, and attracts high quality medical professionals to work at the facility. Medical offices and facilities are increasingly seeing the benefits of managing patient satisfaction scores by providing self service resources that cut down on wait times, medical staff resources and paper costs.
The data collected from this study also noted that on average, people age 20 to late 30 gave the lowest patient satisfaction scores. This is the age group most comfortable with technology, giving this group the highest adoption rates for self service technology. In the context of adding a patient check in kiosk, this would mean that the same group who gives the lowest patient satisfaction scores (more likely as a result of having to wait) are also the most likely to use a kiosk to check into the doctor’s office.
Self Service Kiosks
If you are a practicing healthcare professional or managing an office for patient care services, you could cut down on wait times and potentially handle a higher patient volume, all while improving approval and performance ratings with self serve patient check in kiosks. Implementing a self service kiosk with queuing software allows the patient to walk in, quickly check themselves in for their appointment and add themselves to the queue in just a minute or two. The patient can wait outside of the office and get a text notification on their smartphone when they are next in line. This process transforms the reception area from being a bottleneck for all clerical and check-in operations by handing off some of the check-in process to the kiosk, creating a more streamlined and efficient process.
A Turn Key Patient Check In Solution
Advanced Kiosks offers the QLINE solution which includes all the hardware and software needed to implement an effective patient check in system! Designed to accommodate a wide range of healthcare scenarios, the kiosk hardware and software products can also be sold separately to integrate with your existing platform or system.
To learn more about how our Qline Software and queueing solution is helping medical professionals streamline, watch the video below.
To recap, the patient check in queuing solution:
- Streamlines the check in process
- Cuts down on paper resources
- Frees up staff for other tasks
- Decreases patient wait times
- Eliminates the reception bottleneck
- Sends notifications via text
Advanced Kiosks is an industry leader in developing both the hardware and the software for computer kiosk solutions in dozens of industries. This gives our customers an engineering advantage and seamless integration that results in top performance and customization as needed.
Call one of our technical sales representatives today to get more information and guidance on the perfect solution for your office or organization.
sales@advancedkiosks.com | 603-865-1000
