Making healthcare easier with technology
By Shaw-Ree Chen, Ph.D., Chief Quality and Patient Experience Officer, Oak Orchard Health
To keep you healthy and make sure we’re addressing any barriers to good health, your providers need information. We ask parents about what their kids are doing or not doing at different ages, we ask if you’ve been feeling depressed or unhappy. We ask for insurance information so that your bills don’t go to you and cause stress, we need to know if you have trouble getting transportation to the health center so we can arrange it for you We even ask all our patients to provide us with their approximate annual income so we can receive federal dollars to support our patients in need.
Information is vital to providing care – but paper isn’t! When we use paper forms, we create paper waste, and then we use our staff’s valuable time to enter your information into our medical records. Time that could be spent answering your calls or taking care of patients in the waiting room. Our goal is to maximize the time we spend doing things that are directly beneficial to our patients. And of course, technology is helping us along the way.
Self-check-in
Tired of writing down your address every year in your health record even though you’ve lived in the same place since you were born? Self-check-in gives you the ability to review and approve existing demographic information. If you have a cell phone, you will receive a check-in link a few days before your appointment. With this link, you can confirm your appointment, and review your address, phone number, and insurance, even your medical history. When you arrive at the health center you can walk up to the receptionist when called and simply tell them that you filled out the self-check-in information. There still may be a few documents that need to be signed and payment may need to be received, but all the basic information about you and your loved ones will have already been done.
Keep in mind that self-check-in will come from a phone number that your phone may not recognize. We all have to be careful about clicking links from unknown numbers. The way you’ll know this is a legitimate text is that it will include your name and an accurate appointment date. Then you can safely click on the link to review your information.
In the future, self-check-in will become more complete allowing you to confirm other medical and personal information in the comfort of your home.
Kiosks at our health centers
Do not have a cell phone or forgot to do self-check-in? No problem. The Alexander, Pembroke, and Batavia offices now have kiosks in the waiting area. Soon all our health centers will have them.
What is a kiosk? It’s a free-standing machine (think ATM) and it’s super easy to use. Start by signing in with your name and birth date then begin to confirm or add information. Make sure your address and phone are correct. The kiosk also allows you to identify the person(s) you want to share your health information with should you need to do so. You can also review your medical history, just like in self-check-in.
You will still need to step up to the registration desk when it is your turn to let them know you are here to sign a few documents and review payment, but kiosks help us to reduce wait times by giving people different options to check-in.
Why is Oak Orchard Health getting rid of paper?
We always have our eye on patient experience, safe and high-quality care, and cost of care. In addition to the benefits to staff time mentioned before, the cost of printing and safely destroying documents is high and there’s always a risk that a piece of paper with your information on it is given to the wrong person or dropped where it shouldn’t be. The less paper we use, the more cost-effective we can be and the less risk there is of having your information in the wrong hands.
