Automation in hospital emergency departments brings significant benefits to both patients and healthcare professionals. However, these benefits are not limited to triage. Automation also provides significant advantages in the processes that follow this initial evaluation. In this blog post, I continue from my previous write-up on automating the check-in processes in emergency departments, and we delve more into how automation can streamline operations and improve patient experience post-triage.

Emergency units in hospitals are often busy and chaotic environments where patients require prompt attention for a wide range of medical conditions. One of the most critical parts of the emergency care process is the check-in process, which involves collecting patient information, assessing the severity of their condition, and prioritizing treatment based on urgency. However, the check-in process can be time-consuming, leading to longer wait times for patients and increased workload for hospital staff. In this blog post, we will explore how automating the check-in process can help emergency units improve efficiency and enhance the patient experience.

Mentally, a patient's path begins already at home, when they receive an appointment reminder or an invitation letter from their healthcare provider. Physically, it starts when the patient arrives at the health center or at the hospital. The first thing that the patient usually encounters is a self check-in kiosk. Developing, delivering, and especially programming of such devices is routine work for us at Axel Health, so I decided to write a short blog post on the key ingredients of designing and implementing a great user experience for a self-service kiosk. 

In my previous blog posts, I wrote about the benefits of patient flow management in terms of numbers. In part 1, I focused on the benefits of self service at the front desk and in part 2 I discussed the benefits from the healthcare units' perspective.

Patient experience describes an individual’s experience of their issue, whether it is an illness or an accident, and how healthcare treats that problem. Over the past ten years, many organizations have launched and completed projects to improve the overall patient experience.

What are the key reasons for our customers to implement Axel? The answer is divided in two - for the soft and hard benefits our solution offers. Common soft benefits include improving the patient experience, modernizing the user experience, or increasing operational transparency. Today, however, we are diving into the world of hard benefits – including numbers, spreadsheets, and euros.