Due to understaffing in the healthcare industry, patient wait times are often long and frustrating. Patient check-in kiosks help to regulate incoming traffic via automation and free up medical staff to attend to patients immediately.
They also reduce billing and insurance processing errors, saving large healthcare practices millions. Built on iOS consumer technology, these integrated kiosks are more intuitive for users, easier to deploy and maintain, and cost significantly less than legacy systems over their lifetime.
Improve the Patient Experience
Patients who go to medical offices, hospitals, or other health facilities are often met with disdain. It’s no secret that many of these offices need more staff, leading to long wait times for individuals attempting to check-in.
To help combat this issue, many healthcare facilities utilize a medical check-in kiosk to automate certain tasks. These kiosks can handle everything from a simple patient sign-in process to the more complicated task of filling out lengthy forms. This helps reduce patient wait times while taking pressure off front desk staff members.
Additionally, deploying patient kiosks can help improve patients’ overall experience. Patients often feel irritated and frustrated when faced with long waits in the waiting room or at the front desk. Using a patient kiosk can eliminate these issues by allowing patients to quickly and easily check in themselves. When selecting a company to design and implement your patient kiosk, finding a manufacturer with previous experience in the healthcare industry is important. This will help ensure that your booth is designed to meet the needs of your healthcare practice or hospital while also ensuring that all necessary features are included. Additionally, a manufacturer with extensive experience in the industry will be able to understand better the unique challenges of designing and implementing patient kiosks for the healthcare industry.
Reduce Unauthorized Access
Kiosks are an excellent tool for reducing unauthorized access at home or in your medical office. Integrated with security software, kiosks provide a safe environment for all visitors to your medical office. By providing quick and easy access to your information, medical check-in kiosks eliminate the need for physical interaction. They can be accessed with a simple ID scan or manually entering personal information. This reduces the risk of unauthorized access and ensures staff members can quickly and securely access patient data as needed. Many large healthcare facilities need help with staffing issues, and front desk personnel, in particular, can be overwhelmed with patient requests and questions. By automating processes like patient check-in, kiosks help to reduce wait times and alleviate stress on staff. This improved patient experience can also help to reduce the number of patient no-shows and improve retention rates.
Additionally, kiosks can be used to complete various other tasks, including registering new patients, updating patient records and processing insurance claims. This can save time and money for large healthcare practices that would otherwise need to hire additional employees to manage these tasks. In addition, using a kiosk can help reduce the number of errors in billing and processing that could otherwise cost healthcare facilities millions of dollars in excess medical claims per year.
Increase Efficiency
As any hospital or healthcare facility knows, patient satisfaction is key to attracting new patients and returning existing ones for future treatment. A big part of the patient experience is how long they have to wait before being seen, and automation can help keep this process running smoothly by reducing bottlenecks and allowing staff members to focus on more complex tasks. Using kiosks for patient check-in and other functions can save medical practices money by cutting down on paper costs, printing, and human labor spent manually handling this paperwork. Additionally, kiosks equipped with scanning and optical character recognition (OCR) can make verifying ID and insurance coverage a self-service process for patients by enabling them to scan their documents and fill out the required information within seconds. Kiosks can also assist with collecting copays and past-due bills, a task that normally falls on already overburdened healthcare staff or involves costly printed materials that wind up littering waiting room floors. By allowing patients to pay at the kiosk, they can quickly get on with their appointments and eliminate the need for staff to deal with these time-consuming tasks. Integrated kiosks can also be used for surveys and feedback, helping address patient concerns promptly and improving the overall patient experience.
Save Money
Patient kiosks allow hospitals to offload many manual tasks that staff would otherwise be required to handle. This frees up front-line employees to focus on patient care and reduces waiting times significantly. For example, instead of a patient writing their name and date of appointment on a piece of paper, handing it to the receptionist and waiting for her to check them in, they have to scan their ID or insurance card at the kiosk and be told how much their copay is. This is more efficient, improves the patient experience, and increases their confidence in the hospital. In addition, healthcare facilities can make their kiosks a safer and more pleasant environment by installing anti-microbial tablet enclosures and touchscreens. This retrofittable film protects against scratches, removes glare, and makes the device harder for germs to grow on the screen. It is common to see kiosks with this coating at hospitals and doctors’ surgeries. Ultimately, a patient kiosk allows the healthcare facility to serve patients better and ensure HIPAA and HITECH compliance with minimal resources. They can be customized with any number of workflows that increase efficiency and reduce costs, making them an investment that will pay off for years.