Monday, 2 December 2013

ENHANCING PATIENT LOYALTY IN HOSPITALS THROUGH BETTER PATIENT FLOW MANAGEMENT



"This new customer-focus approach to business has evolved in the past few years, because retaining the customer is cheaper than acquiring a new one." - Hong.

With the increasing number of hospitals and super specialty hospitals in every nook and corner of each city, it becomes extremely important that hospitals take proactive steps to retain their customer base and to improve the patient loyalty. Many big hospitals have started thinking seriously about this aspect and few of them have taken innovative measures to address this – providing personalized care, improving doctor-patient / nurse-patient interactions and making patients much more aware about the disease, the treatment plan and medication that is followed, to name a few.  

token management system
Token Taking System



    The very often ignored area is improving on the Patient Flow Management. Even though hospitals are wary that most of their patients will have concern about the manner the crowds are being managed at the registration counters, doctor’s room, labs and pharmacies they find it difficult to effectively manage the same. Patients would hate to stand in queues or crowd around a service counter but they also would not want to lose their priority of availing the service in a counter. 

patient management system
Patient Flow Management

    An effective Patient Flow Management shall be possible only:

  1.         If the hospital can predict the possible patient inflow in any particular day. Knowing number of patients who could visit on a day and their purpose of visit at-least a day in advance would help hospitals to plan the resource deployment well in advance
  2.      If the hospital can identify the queue position of a patient vis-à-vis other patients the moment patient walks in and can make sure their position is being retained across all service counters like reception, doctors room, lab and pharmacy then the first patient who comes in will ideally be the one who goes out first. The first-come-first-serve principle shall thus be maintained across the service counters right from the time the patient steps in to the hospital till he goes out of the hospital.
      With a manual or semi-automated Patient Flow Management mechanism the above two points are practically impossible to implement. Tradition LED based Queue Management Systems has failed over time because of this. An integrated automated Patient Flow Management software system can only be the solution for the above.
       

         While many Queue Management vendors has been doing research in these areas, a few like QMAGIK has married the power of Mobile, Web based and In-premise software systems to provide an integrated and more automated Patient Flow Management. Network Hospitals like ASTER, Qatar who implemented such advanced Patient Flow Management Systems acknowledge that their Patient Loyalty has improved significantly within a short span of time.

           Blog Original Source 



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