In a perfect
world, our patients and families wouldn’t have any wait time before their
appointment. After receiving some feedback from patients and families, as well
as observation from staff, about the registration process—we knew we had to
figure out a solution to a very long registration process.
Drumroll please…
On December
15, 2014 our Mountainside outpatient center rolled out a new tablet
registration process! And so far, the feedback has been terrific!
Here’s how
it works—a patient comes in to register for their first appointment, we need to
scan them in or double check their documentation before “clearing” them. We
would work with this patient to clear all of their documentation before moving
on to the next patient family – who is probably here for their weekly therapy
visit.
So, if the
next patient in line has already had their paperwork checked and is considered
a “clean registration,” they’d still need to wait until we complete the
registration for the first patient.
You can see
the issue here.
This new
tablet registration streamlines the whole process and decreases wait time. Now,
each patient will receive a card that will allow them to check themselves in at
the self-service kiosk. How cool is that?!
Let me explain.
Greeters
wait in the lobby in Mountainside for patients to arrive. The greeter can see
the patient’s appointment time as well as if there is any documentation that
they need copies of or signatures for.
Each patient
gets a card like the one below. This card allows them to breeze through the
registration process with just a swipe! If there is any missing documentation,
the system will alert the family (if using the self-service registration) or
the employee that something needs to be completed.
The bonus?
They get two cards – so if there are two caretakers who swap appointments they
won’t need to worry about sharing a card – and the card can be used at any of
our locations.
This new
registration process is incredibly beneficial on many levels.
First, by
allowing patients whose documents are up to date move quicker through the
registration process, their wait time is decreased significantly, allowing for
an improved patient experience. In addition, because each “clean registration”
receives a card, families are able to check themselves in for their appointment
and avoid waiting in line!
As any
project that we begin, we need to ensure that the end goal is aligned with our
corporate goals. As an organization, we have set a growth goal of opening 1-2
sites each year. With the addition of this tablet registration process, we
decrease wait time but also increase the amount of patients we are able to see.
With more patients, we are able to look into more sites!
And lastly,
consistency is key! The tablet registration will help to streamline the
registration process and create more consistency at all of our sites. Since the
goal is to have a “clean registration” for each patient, the documentation
process will be much smoother on the back-end as well. For example, Finance
will be able to collect the necessary information for insurance claims, since
each greeter will be ensuring all documentation is updated and in the system
before the patient proceeds.
This project
was a huge undertaking, and took a cross-departmental team of motivated folks
to complete. I have to give major kudos to Darlene Carr, Jana Prokop, Carrie
Snyder, Lindsey Marabella, Nicole Assante, Tamisha Bourne, Jessica Hall, Donna
Provenzano, Chuck Chianese, Linda Waddell, Haig Minassian, and Taaliba Warden
for working through weekly 2-hour meetings, and testing. Kudos to Patient
Access, Strategic Improvement, and IT for all of their hard work in making sure
the table registration went off without a hitch.
And lastly,
cheers to the Registration Staff at Mountainside for being our pilot site to
launch the table registration. They have been continuing to provide input to
the team on modifications, and helped us to get into a better situation to
launch this system to our other sites.
By Spring we
hope to implement tablet registration in two other sites – Newark &
Hamilton – with a goal of using the system in at least 85 percent of our sites
by the end of 2015.
