Remember the first time you experienced concierge service that changed your hospitality experience? Maybe that individual directed you to an amazing restaurant or saved your job by arranging for the delivery of documents needed for an important pitch meeting.
Maybe the concierge reorchestrated your transportation from the hotel to the airport so you could relax for an extra hour by the pool. Whatever the service, the concierge undoubtedly improved your experience, provided a valuable solution, and made a significant difference during your stay in unfamiliar surroundings.
What if healthcare providers could offer a similar “concierge” experience to patients during the unfamiliar, anxiety-inducing misfortune of an illness or injury that requires a visit to a hospital emergency room? Well, now it’s possible!
Healthcare chatbot technology can now cater to the needs of patients and patient communication to enhance their care delivery experience. This same technology enables hospitals to automate emergency room (ER) intake workflow to capture key patient information necessary to provide service.
The chatbot can go to work before the patient arrives at the ER. The chatbot can also help a patient en route by providing information such as directions to the ER, a map of the facilities, wait times, and more.
The New Healthcare Chatbot
Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing healthcare from natural language processing capabilities and transforming it into “smart” agent escalation. You may have experienced the assistance of a chatbot at your bank or at another service-related business but thanks to AI-driven chatbots like Quincy by QliqSOFT, concierge-level service is happening in the ER.
The Quincy Chatbot Design Suite is a HIPAA-compliant, customizable, automated. It is a live-agent chatbot platform that serves specific healthcare communication and business objectives.
Easily implemented, Quincy chatbots provide patient interaction that improves the quality, cost and experience of care delivery, as well as recorded usage data that enables improved operations, compliance and reimbursement.
Improving ER Flow & Patient Experience
Over time, ERs have become overwhelmed by patients, overworked staff members, and have steadily declined in providing top-notch service. This increase in the provision of services places demands on ER staff and has the potential to decrease patient experience and outcomes. ER concierge chatbots exemplify how technology can provide solutions that relieve the pressure resulting from expanding care services.
Pre-appointment registration enables the early segmentation of patients based on the condition or injuries before they come to the hospital. Based on responses to pre-appointment registration questions, a chatbot can provide vital information that enables the ER staff to identify a patient’s needs and hospital resources prior to their arrival.
Once the chatbot has captured patient responses. It automatically transfer the information the appropriate intake care team, members. This greatly improves patient intake flow and enhances the patient experience.
Emergency Room Wait Time Management
Demand, capacity, queuing, variation, wait times, and constraints are all well-known, interrelated variables ERs must manage. Improvements in just one of these can have a ripple effect across the room that results in greater patient satisfaction as well as staff satisfaction; all of which lead to greater financial success.
ER concierge chatbots demonstrate the first potential bottlenecks in a complex hospital while simultaneously improving care outcomes. When demand is high and low capacity, achieving improved flow enables greater service capacity and better staff effectiveness. Both of which add value for the ER and its patients.
Hospitals across the nation are seeing an increase in patients who choose to leave before admission or during the diagnosis and treatment process. Harvard Business Review, February 6, 2019, reported that the average hospital ER patient in the United States waits more than 1.5 hours before admission and another 2.25 hours before being discharged. Perhaps, even more worrisome, the same report also stated the number of patients who leave ERs without being seen by a nurse or doctor has almost doubled in recent years.
The Solution
By implementing a chatbot as robust as those that can be designed using the Quincy Chatbot Design Suite, ERs can finally improve challenges related to the variables that result in poor delivery of care at multiple stages of the ER continuum of care.
Chatbots such as Quincy ER Concierge intervene and engage patients meaningfully. In doing so, ER staff is able to remain focused on providing quality care that enables greater patient outcomes and fewer readmissions.
ERs are busy and complex. Alleviating just one bottleneck can have a noticeable impact that improves everyone’s experience in the ER continuum of care. The Quincy ER Concierge Chatbot is an example of how healthcare technology can be deployed to provide virtual assistance and productive patient engagement.
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