Paperwork – it’s one of the biggest roadblocks to patient satisfaction. You’re having pre-admission testing at the hospital. You’re getting registered for outpatient surgery. You’re there for treatment or a diagnostic procedure. And all the while – in this age of technology – you’re filling out the same information on paperwork over and over and over again.

Processes and the paperwork involved are huge drivers of dissatisfaction in hospitals and other healthcare facilities. The Valley Health System in Nevada is attempting to shorten the timeframe and paperwork involved in checking in for appointments. They’re adopting self-service entry as an option at its five hospitals.

Patients can enter information into a kiosk, sign consent forms, make payments, confirm insurance information, etc. Keep in mind that this essentially automates a manual process, but it does so in such a way as to eliminate some employee instructional involvement with the customers, engage the customer during waits, automatically update information in the hospital’s computer system without the employee having to key the data, and increase quality of data input.

You can draw several conclusions from the www.marketwatch.com article (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-valley-health-system-improves-the-patient-experience-with-self-service-check-in-from-ncr-2010-06-22?reflink=MW_news_stmp).

But the main conclusion I want to highlight is this – paperwork is a dissatisfier. Question EVERY piece of paper you create, every manual form you use, every data entry procedure that starts with someone writing information on a piece of paper.

Question EVERY piece of paper. It’s about more than “going green.” It’s about productivity, patient (customer) satisfaction, process quality, and reducing perception of wait time.

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