Elecom streamlines hospital check-in and check-out with digital kiosks

Introduction

Elecom, a Paris-based systems integrator with both hardware and creative expertise, had noted a pattern of recurring requests. Multiple hospitals from around France were struggling to triage the increasing load of patient appointments, exacerbated by the rising burden on medical staff due to the Coronavirus epidemic. Was there a way to streamline the check-in and check-out process to reduce errors, shorten wait-times, and minimize the volume of patients co-present in the same waiting room?

Elecom took their expertise in interactivity, mixed it with their 8+ years of experience with Intuiface, and tackled the problem.

Understanding the Challenge

We've all been to a doctor's office and the experience tends to be fairly consistent:

1. stand in line with other patient arrivals, waiting for one of a small number of check-in clerks to become available
2. watch as those in front of you take an oddly long time to check in
3. finally approach a window or a desk and then communicate everything about yourself, your doctor, and your reason for visiting
4. wait for data entry, correct mistakes, and then (depending on your country and cause) pay fees
5. sit down with strangers and count the minutes as you have no idea how long the wait will last

Good experience? No, and the check-out process could be just as challenging

Then there is the medical staff. They no more benefit from this process than the patients. Consider: Overwhelmed office personnel are tasked with managing an increasingly frustrated line of patients. Additional work is backlogged in an effort to properly sign in and advise visitors. And should any patient information be incorrect, the check-in flow is bottlenecked until a resolution can be found.

Both patients and medical staff are undermined by an old fashioned, completely human-dependent process that can be slowed or blocked at multiple stages. There must be a better way!

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Solution

Based on a variety of projects in other domains, Elecom knew digital interactivity could be a 'waiting room line buster' that streamlines the check-in and check-out process. After studying the unique needs of a hospital setting, Elecom identified the following capabilities as key:

1. check-in supporting multiple self-identification methods
2. data integration with hospital management systems
3. queuing system combining number assignment with signage displaying next number to be served
4. scheduling for follow-up appointments

Elecom built this solution with Intuiface and named it Hospicom. It's a turnkey solution that can be custom branded, integrated with unique back-office systems, and deployed for any hospital in just one month. Everything can be customized. The use of Intuiface ensures there is a clear separation of concerns, enabling the user interface, business logic, system integrations, and more to evolve independently.

Medical offices can choose from either self-service or assisted deployment, dependent on patient demographics and their level of comfort with interactivity. In all cases, visitors can choose from multiple check-in methods, including QR code scanning for appointments scheduled online to data entry for resources like Social Security cards. Peripherals assisting check-in include bar code scanners, card readers, and printers.

Integrations delivered in the one-month timeline mentioned above include hospital management systems, queue management systems, and online health appointment platforms. Kiosk housing can be custom-branded and installed virtually anywhere in the waiting room. The result is elimination of virtually all adoption barriers.

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Results

Elecom has already deployed Hospicom in multiple hospitals, including

• Institut Mutualiste Montsouris: 6 kiosks with a single attendant, customized with a focus on serving the elderly community
• Hospital Foch: 15 kiosks with two attendants, broadly focused on check-in

Feedback from these deployments have highlighted a variety of benefits for the hospital:

1. Reduced check-in staffing - and thus higher levels of staffing for other business-critical tasks. For example, the Institut Mutualiste Montsouris was able to redirect three staffers from check-in to finance.
2. Patient wait time reduction from 30 minutes to 5 minutes
3. Decreased volume of co-present patients in the waiting room
4. Higher patient satisfaction

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The net result is delivery of a positive ROI in just a single quarter. This is coupled with almost an immediate reduction in the strain of check-in and check-out for office visits. Underlying Intuiface analytics can be used to identify additional bottlenecks, ensuring Elecom's ability to fine tune deployments after go-live.

Hospicom is a uniquely competitive offering for a high friction environment. Hospitals benefit by having access to a low cost, fit-for-purpose solution. By using the Intuiface platform, Elecom benefits by being able to offer a competitively priced, high value, highly personalized solution with far more agility, quality and in far shorter time frames than would have been possible with custom software development. As a bonus, with Intuiface now being ISO27001-certified, Elecom can rely on the platform’s compliance with data protection requirements.