Having an efficient hospital queue management system at a health care institution is of utmost importance, especially when the patients visiting the facility are either in pain or frail health, making it difficult for them to queue for long periods of time until a medical practitioner is available to treat them. When The Prince Charles Hospital looked to overhaul their reception and waiting areas for their specialist outpatient area, one of their biggest concerns was what impact this would have on their patients, and how best to improve the facilities to enhance patient comfort.
Hospital Queue Management: A Challenge At The Prince Charles Hospital
The Prince Charles Hospital is situated in Chermside, Queensland. It’s specialist Outpatient Service is home to a variety of specialist rooms, including cardiac surgery, hematology, oncology, sleep disorders and vascular surgery. Every day, around 500 patients visit one of the specialist rooms. Needless to say, this results in large queues and big opportunity to improve patient flow using queue management systems.
In addition, with so many patients queuing, having visibility over and being able to readily access patients in line was difficult for the staff. They had to waste precious time searching for patients transiting between various departments and looking for ‘lost patients’ waiting in the wrong rooms.
Adopting Q-Flow For Efficient Hospital Queue Management
The Board at Prince Charles Hospital looked a queue systems and decided to introduce the Q-Flow system from NEXA in order to achieve their objective of making the hospital more efficient and reducing wait times in their facilities with better queue management.
Using Q-Flow, patients register their arrival by scanning a barcode found on their appointment letter. Each patient enters a virtual queue, which respects the scheduled appointment time. Those early-bird patients are reminded of their actual appointment time and offered suggestions on areas of the hospital they may like to visit during their wait, such as the hospital cafeteria. Patients can also check in manually by entering their details into the Q-Flow system.
This new system has vastly improved the wait time and general efficiency at The Prince Charles Hospital. Patients and staff are experiencing less wait comfortably in the lounge area before their appointment, enhancing their physical comfort while they wait to be seen by their specialist provider.
Read the full Prince Charles Hospital Case Study
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