BEAVER, PA – Waiting in line is the bane of people’s experience – studies show we lose 48 hours each year queuing up. Recent surveys say people most despise waiting in line at a department of motor vehicle facility; in third place is the line encountered when patients register at a clinic or hospital.
Consumers aren’t forgiving, said Michael R. Webster, vice president of self-service solutions for the NCR Corporation, at an educational session at last month’s Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference and exhibit in Orlando, Fla. They blame their wait on providers not having enough staff.
“These are avoidable issues that can be avoided by using a strategic application of self-service options,” Webster said. “What self-service is really about is taking low-value, high-frequency transactions and handling them quickly.”
The Heritage Valley Health System in Beaver, Pa. uses a variety of approaches to facilitate patient interactions.
“Access and customer satisfaction is what the average consumer thinks about in healthcare today,” said Norm Mitry, president and CEO of the system. “The experience for the family needs to be seamless.”
Patients at Heritage Valley can register for lab services online. In another approach to ease the registration process and build its brand, the system has 250,000 patient care cards in circulation in its service area.
The system has five locations that use check-in technology, and the vast majority of patients prefer to use it after only a visit or two. Heritage Valley now has more than 18,000 self-service check-ins per month, Mitry said.
Benefits from the self-service initiative include expedited registrations, operational efficiency, staff productivity, a huge reduction in paper and print handling and increased patient flow and throughput. Heritage Valley has realized a $400,000 annual savings on paper and printing cartridges alone by reducing the use of paper forms, Mitry said.
In addition, self-service reduced staff time by 3.5 minutes per patient per day, or a total savings of about 40 hours of staff time per day.
Wait times for laboratory services have gone down by almost 50 percent following implementation of check-in services, which provide dollar savings as well.
Intangible benefits include increased customer satisfaction and loyalty and better branding for the organization.
Customer are setting expectations for healthcare based on their experiences in other places, said Webster, who co-presented with Mitry. Some 70 percent of travelers use kiosks at airports, for example.
“Consumers expect you to deliver that same speed and efficiency,” Webster said. Consumers prefer to do business with companies that use self-service, and a variety of industries are realizing additional customer loyalty and revenue by offering self-service.