As anyone who works in the healthcare industry can tell you, emergency departments (EDs) are known for often being crowded and stressful environments. Patients coming in at all hours of the day and night seeking immediate treatment can easily cause significant backups and waiting times, causing frustration for both staff and patients.
These issues make managing emergency departments quite a difficult task. Luckily, there are a number of digital solutions such as online check-in tools that can make the management of EDs much easier.
To ease the strain put on emergency departments during peak hours, EDs are using online check-in tools to help manage their operations more effectively. Here are four ways that these tools can help in the management of your emergency department:
- Online check-in tools can help reduce waiting times.
- They can help ED staff manage patient flow more efficiently.
- They can provide valuable data that can be used to improve ED operations.
- They can improve the overall patient experience.
Let’s take a closer look at each of these benefits in turn.
Reduce Waiting Times
Because of how busy and chaotic emergency departments can easily become, reducing waiting times is one of the most important goals for any ED. Online check-in tools can help to reduce waiting times by allowing patients to reserve their spot in line before they even arrive at the ED. This way, ED staff can better predict how many patients they will need to accommodate and plan accordingly.
Manage Patient Flow Efficiently
Similarly, online check-in tools can help emergency department staff manage their patient flow more efficiently. An extremely useful feature of many online check-in tools is the ability to track the amount of time spent in the ED by each patient. By tracking how long each patient spends in the ED, staff can better identify bottlenecks and make changes to the flow of traffic accordingly.
This information collected by online check-in tools can also be used to improve the triage process so that patients with more urgent needs are seen first. This will not only make your ED more efficient but also ensure that those in immediate need of treatment receive the care they need as quickly as possible.
Provide Valuable Data
In the current healthcare landscape, the more data that can be collected, the more efficiently any medical practice will be able to run. In addition to reducing waiting times and improving patient flow, the data collected by online check-in solutions can also be used to improve emergency department operations in a number of other ways.
For example, analysts inside the ED can use the data collected to identify trends in patient visits and make accurate predictions about future demand. This information can then be used to determine staffing levels, stock supplies, and plan for future capacity needs that will help them prepare for the future. The more data that an ED’s online check-in tool is able to collect, the more equipped the staff in the ED will be to handle any number of obstacles that come their way.
Improve Patient Experience
Finally, online check-in tools can also improve the overall patient experience. When it comes down to it, providing a positive patient experience is a top priority for any ED or medical practice in general. Online check-in tools are a great way to make your patient’s experience in the ED as positive as possible.
These tools are useful because patients who are able to reserve their place in line electronically often report feeling less anxious and more in control of their situation. In addition, having accurate information about expected wait times can help patients make better decisions about when to seek care. Both of these factors can make patients feel more at ease during an oftentimes stressful situation.
Overall, emergency departments that implement an online check-in system often see significant improvements in their operations. By reducing wait times, improving patient flow, and providing valuable data, online check-in tools can help EDs be managed as smoothly as possible while providing a better experience for staff and patients alike.
Boost Your Emergency Department Management Today
ER Express offers intuitive solutions that are suited to benefit the modern emergency department. ER Express’ online check-in tool provides valuable efficiency-increasing features and insightful data that can be used to continuously improve operations in any emergency department.
To learn more about how ER Express can improve your practice or ED, schedule a demo today.
