Patient Experience Management: Lessons from Other Industries

Combining The Two Technologies for Better Inpatient Experience Management

Sadly, healthcare inpatient operations are still functioning in the old way. On the patient side, patients still have a hard time placing requests for their urgent needs, such as ordering food and beverages, changing bed sheets, etc.

There are many times when their requests are delayed or even unanswered. And not only that, every patient has approximately two bystanders who are having a tough time in a hospital caring for a sick person. And no one is caring for their needs. 

While the nursing bell has served healthcare for many years, it has outlived its utility. One of the fundamental principles of Kaizen is continuous improvement, and the nursing bell method calls for an upgrade. Apart from being an inefficient method of raising requests, it also has ethical issues. 

For example, if three patients are ringing a bell simultaneously, there’s no way to identify which person called the attendant first. The attendant would just attend to requests randomly without caring about the most urgent request.

Then there’s an age-old workflow problem where nurses go to the supervisor with the requests. This leads to the loss of precious time, which nurses should be spending on patient care. It increases nurses’ workload, leading to their burnout, which in turn affects patient satisfaction.

Research has shown that patients that stayed in units where nurses were happy with the work environment were twice as likely to report higher satisfaction² with care than other patients. The supervisors too have their own set of challenges as they have no track of the number of requests or the status of each request. 

This situation is ironic because a hospital employs as much staff as a luxurious hotel. Then why can’t hospitals provide the same luxurious experience? While healthcare has been slow in adopting technology, it can leverage the potential of innovations in other industries. 

For example, one of our products, BestDoc Concierge, combines QR code technology and mobile alerts for work distribution. Patients, bystanders or even nursing staff can raise a request by scanning a QR code, just like the way they do to make payments to any merchant. It makes patients feel cared for as they know help is only a tap away at any time during their stay. They don’t have to go through the anguish of finding whether and when their request will be attended. 

On the staff side, a bell rings whenever a request is raised, like a Zomato or Swiggy, and the staff gets an alert. All this means, requests are captured easily and assigned in real-time. Administrators have a full view if any request is not assigned, and they can take swift action. With this technology, the attendants can be much more effective and provide a 5-star experience to patients.