Improving patient experiences with digital access solutions

The patient is at the heart of hospitals and healthcare organisations and good patient experiences are critical. Increasingly, healthcare organisations are investing in digital solutions to help transform their operations — both inside and outside of the physical operating room — in an effort to streamline processes, drive productivity and, ultimately, deliver improved patient outcomes and experiences.

Continued digital transformation is critical to the success of hospitals and healthcare organisations. Everything from communication to cybersecurity and administrative processes is being upgraded across the healthcare sector, as public and private organisations continue to evolve to keep pace with changing patient needs. For many organisations in the healthcare space, it’s essential to transform and upgrade systems and processes to deliver improved patient outcomes and experiences.

The most effective way to achieve this is to streamline processes and automate practices where possible to alleviate the burden on staff and empower healthcare workers to dedicate more time to what matters most — their patients — instead of towards cumbersome paperwork.

Remedying the access management affliction

Like many other industries, organisations operating in health care can be overwhelmed with paperwork relating to patients, visitors, guests, staff and contractors. This can create headaches for staff, especially when it comes to managing compliance and maintaining the safety and security of patients. One of the more cumbersome processes for hospitals and healthcare organisations can be the flow of people onsite and across sites, as hospitals and healthcare organisations experience high volumes of foot traffic.

Managing the movement of people across sites was a challenge that was especially prevalent during the pandemic. To eliminate the risk of errors in paper-based, manual sign-in and sign-out processes, many organisations turned to digital solutions during this time and invested in digital visitor access management solutions.

There are a multitude of reasons why digital visitor, contractor and staff access management solutions have emerged as a cure for the administrative burden associated with people movement for organisations in healthcare. These include:

1. Streamlined processes

The latest digital access management solutions make signing people in and out a breeze for hospitals and healthcare organisations. Modern, cloud-based solutions include features such as facial recognition, unlimited sign-in/sign-out, visitor photos and custom badge printing for seamless contactless sign-in. Guests can also be pre-registered for an accelerated sign-in process.

Eliminating time-consuming, paper-based processes and replacing them with automated, digital access management solutions lets hospitals and healthcare providers create welcoming environments for visitors, contractors and staff without delaying their site access. This ensures that patients and other visitors can attend appointments and visit their loved ones quicker to ensure a better patient experience. At the same time, it also eliminates the need for dedicated staff to administer the sign-in and sign-out process, which ensures they can dedicate more time to looking after patients and enhancing the hospital experience.

2. Improved visibility

Digital access management solutions also ensure hospital staff can improve their access to records for improved compliance. For example, the latest cloud-based solutions include online portals, companion mobile apps, dashboard and emergency reporting, and SMS and email notifications to improve site communication with staff as well as provide enhanced visibility of visitors and contractors onsite.

Digital solutions ensure hospitals and healthcare organisations can improve their compliance by creating digital paper trails and facilitating rapid access to accurate, up-to-date information and records of every person on their site at any given time. This means that staff can run real-time reports in the event of an emergency or for auditing purposes and achieve a more holistic view of who is onsite at their locations at any given time.

3. Strengthened security

Hospitals and healthcare providers also benefit from being able to deliver more comprehensive safety and security measures onsite by leveraging digital access management solutions. Cloud-based solutions can be used to provide essential information to people on sign-in — such as policies, non-disclosure agreements and critical messages — to ensure every visitor receives the information they need in the event of an emergency. Additionally, they can be secured with single sign-on (SSO) processes and provide essential data privacy, which is critical for compliance in the healthcare sector. As cloud-based solutions, they can also be regularly and automatically updated with the latest organisation, industry and/or government regulations to ensure improved security and compliance.

Digital access management solutions also let providers manage multiple sites from a single, centralised online portal. They can be set up to manage access restrictions, providing an added layer of security onsite. This is critical to ensure the utmost level of care and protection to patient and visitor data and helps hospitals provide improved patient experiences and outcomes.

In a fast-paced environment focused on delivering essential care to those that need it most, every minute matters. Hospitals and healthcare providers must digitally transform their operations as much as possible to free up more time to deliver critical care. While investing in digital access management solutions may not immediately seem like an essential way to help patients, the flow-on effects are many, including the delivery of improved compliance, safety and security.

Modern digital solutions with the latest features empower healthcare providers to eliminate time-consuming tasks from their team members, reducing the administrative burden on staff and improving productivity without sacrificing on safety or security. Ultimately, this helps frontline workers continue to deliver essential care without getting caught up in cumbersome administration work.

Image credit: iStock.com/LeoWolfert