With the swipe of a health card, Hanover Emergency Room patients are self registering.
Hospital Vice President Dana Howes calls this is a patient driven initiative aimed at speeding up triage while reducing ER wait times
Howes says Hanover is the first hospital in all of Grey Bruce to offer self registration in its Emergency Room Department.
By allowing patients to self register she says it streamlines the patients experience and saves on staff resources.
Upon entering the Emergency Room waiting area, patients swipe their health card on an little I-pad like kiosk.
She says it is extremely user friendly, patients are asked to answer a few simple questions and select in the diagnosis options the reason for their visit.
This information is then displayed on a grease board in the nurse department and a nurse will than come out and triage the patient.
Howes says the new system will not replace triage but it will certainly speed up the process.
This is because a patients information will be entered into the system as soon as they arrive at the ER instead of the old way in which the patient had to wait their turn for a nurse to call them in and manually enter the same
info.
Howes says the new registration kiosk has received a lot of positive feedback from patients.
She says not only is it extremely user friendly but it also allows patients to have more say in the care.
The new ER registration kiosk has been so well received that the Hospital is planning to expand it to other areas of the hospital
The obstetrics and cardiac rehab clinics are first on the list.