4 Ways To Improve Hospital Competitiveness and Patient Satisfaction

You may not think of it often, but hospitals and healthcare organizations are businesses too. Their main focus may be the treatment and care of a patient, but they also have some money to make. With the recent emergence of minute clinics and urgent care centers, there has been a rise in competition in terms of business. At the end of the day, patients are consumers of healthcare and their choice for where they seek treatment is a big deal. Minute clinics and urgent care centers are commonly known for their ‘faster’ treatment capabilities which can be the reason why some patients chose the latter instead of a hospital.

With this being said, hospitals need to become more competitive and improve satisfaction in order to hold their market share. Check out these four ways hospitals can speed up their admittance rates and increase patient satisfaction.

1. Patient-Friendly Technologies             

Generally speaking, any time a patient goes for a visit, there is a large amount of paperwork to be completed before admittance. By integrating smart technologies, like electronic forms, patients can quickly submit information via tablet or some other computing device while waiting to be seen.

2. Print Management

On the other end, healthcare workers must print out wristbands, documents and other paper forms that can consume precious time. In order to speed up the delivery time of paper forms, print management solutions can streamline printing duties. This has a domino effect because it will translate into quicker patient admittance and hasten other workflows.

3. Modern Feel

No one likes waiting around in a dry, dusty and bland waiting room. By designing and renovating a welcoming waiting room, patients will get a better sense of treatment if they are in an area planned to be comfortable. By providing conveniences like WiFi, comfortable seating and a lounge type area, waiting would not be perceived as bad as it is.

4. More Time With Doctors

By increasing the overall speed and efficiency of patient wait times, doctors should be able to increase time spent with the patient. By allowing for more time to talk about an ailment, patients will be more satisfied with their visit and likely to return in the future if another medical issue arises.

While staying competitive is a big deal, hospitals do have advance technologies at their disposal to improve overall workflows, the challenge is integrating them!

Revolutionizing Healthcare Organizations

The healthcare industry is a major driving force to the American lifestyle because they provide thousands of jobs, save lives and send billions of dollars, if not trillions, into the economy. However, the healthcare industry spends billions of dollars, if not trillions, each year providing medical care because it’s an expensive practice that consumes valuable resources. Before you start thinking about the complicated surgeries, procedures and the expensive medications, think about another factor that costs healthcare organizations a ton of money: paper.

Now you may not think that paper is a big deal or is an important role at a healthcare organization. But paper is used to print patient records, it’s used for patients to fill out forms and there just is an unnecessary amount of paper flow that occurs every day. Why would this matter? Because cutting costs where they will not sacrifice jobs can save patients and the healthcare organization a lot of money would be cost effective. We live in the technology age, so why aren't we utilizing it at its fullest potential? This means paper can be cut out of healthcare organizations by initiating the use of automated healthcare solutions that turnprinted documents in digital files.

Streamlining paperwork to be performed on a digital format can save money, the environment and even speed up healthcare response time. Think of the last time you were in the waiting room and had to fill out a bunch of paperwork – it probably took some time and even caused you some frustration. Imagine that step falling out of the process, patients could see faster care and lowered costs. There are a few different automated healthcare solutions that are possible to implement in any organization. Take for instance a registration kiosk in the lobby of a hospital – this type of technology could speed up the registration time and automatically check you into the hospital with pre-admit forms that help schedule your visit.

Something as simple as a kiosk would make it easier for patients to check in and reduce the amount of time wasted filling out paper forms. Healthcare organizations all over the country should start phasing out paperwork and get a jump on the 21^st century.

So Much Paper So Little Time

No matter what industry you work in, printing out documents can sometimes be a hassle especially if you work in a multi-floored hospital with a huge network of computers and printers. Getting the documents and printed materials you need can sometimes create huge inefficiencies that cost time and money. Considering that 30% of hospital staff time is spent on administrative activities, like processing forms, that crucial time could be used elsewhere in the organization.

With print management software,hospitals and other healthcare providers can benefit from streamlined programs that make administrative services much more efficient. Think about all the printed forms that come from different areas of the hospital like the human resource department, clinical areas and the administrative space. Those facets are critically important to get the proper document in the hands of who need it most.

Choosing the right printing solution will help create a repository of workflows and forms on demand, keeping pace with the utmost urgency that most hospitals work under. A server-based solution can work behind the scenes and capture the data that is sent between systems and automatically generate the documents you need to print. This eliminates the cost of pre-printed forms which helps conserve the environment and saves money on paper purchases and ink. Additionally, a well executed print management system will give greater control over forms standardization and vastly speed up the admissions process for incoming patients.

According to a recent article, patients wait 4 or more hours on average in the emergency room! Cutting back wasted time with inefficient hospital documents could drastically reduce that average and help patients get the care they need in a quicker manner. As wait times increase, patient satisfaction drops and could likely make them agitated or annoyed that they were not taken care of in a timely manner. This creates a domino effect because it may be the potential for some hostile interaction from the patient towards the medical team. Simply put, print management software has numerous benefits that range from cost savings, time savings and better patient satisfaction.