Healthcare facilities are facing the problem of overcrowding in emergency departments. Patients have to wait hours in the emergency department for their first face-to-face interaction with their physicians. After their interaction, they must wait again to be transferred to the hospital bed for further treatment or tests. During pandemics and even after pandemics, hospital emergency rooms are usually overcrowded. Waiting in the hospital emergency room is stressful for the patients. Patient engagement solutions are the only strategy to ease patient inflow. Using patient engagement solutions can reduce the patient’s stress as well.
Enhance Patient engagement through telehealth services.
Telehealth is an emerging strategy to reduce the number of emergency department visits. Telemedicine has become widely used technology during and after Covid-19.
- Although telehealth is not helpful for extreme emergencies, it is helpful in minor ones.
- Telehealth improves healthcare providers’ efficiency.
- It reduces transportation time and smoothens workflows.
- Telemedicine helps hospital emergency rooms increase their service rate through proper resource allocation.
- It may help to reduce patient stay time in the emergency room.
- A healthcare provider monitors patients remotely through a telehealth facility, and the patient inflow in the emergency room decreases.
- Telehealth can act as a gate-keeping and coordination mechanism to ensure the proper allocation of the patients in respective departments.
- It can offer remote patient examinations.
- Robotic telehealth with a camera, screen, and equipment helps care providers enhance their productivity.
- Advancement in patient engagement can help patients improve their health conditions without visiting care providers.
- It can also help rural communities to approach better healthcare providers via telehealth.
- In the long term, telehealth can help decrease the probabilities of chronic health emergencies.
Keep your patient up-to-date.
Waiting in the emergency room without knowing what’s happening is frustrating and depressing. If you do not update the patient or the family member, they will interrupt staff members.
Patient engagement solutions help healthcare providers to send automated text updates to the patients. These text messages must contain real-time information about the facility and the emergency department’s capacity.
If the waiting time is prolonged, reassurance and proper information can reduce patient stress. It can save staff from unnecessary interruptions.
Well-organized communication is a part patient engagement strategy to reduce the patient and provider stress. Education is the second section to consider. Some of the patients prefer emergency room visits just for convenience. Only better information can tackle this issue.
Improved patient engagement in the primary care room also reduces the unnecessary visits to the emergency room visit. Hence, overcrowding in emergency rooms reduces.
Avoid unnecessary overcrowding.
It would help if you created an optimal environment and effective patient flow to reduce overcrowding in emergency departments. Patient engagement software offers real-time information about the facility. Proper information can identify the problems quickly and solve them early. It can also support providers from being temporarily housed in the emergency department.
A care provider can get a fast track system for minor injuries in another part of the facility by using Patient engagement software. Nursing staff can handle minor injuries that can reduce the workload of care providers and specialists.
Fasten the discharge process and avoid readmissions.
Enhancing patient communication can speed up the discharge process for patients who are not admitted. Texted information can save time and readmissions. Automated text message reminders are helpful to elderly patients. Better workflow throughout the facility helps in an efficient hospital discharge process. Patient engagement during outpatient treatment and identifying at-risk patients can also prevent hospital emergency room visits.
Predictive analytics
Predictive analytics sends alerts to healthcare providers about upcoming events. It can also help to predict possible outcomes before their occurrence. Predictive analytics enable better staff and resources planning, problem-solving capacity issues, and direct workflows in real-time.
End Notes
Overcrowded emergency rooms affect patient satisfaction at large. Secondly, this situation can lead to poor healthcare outcomes. Many seeking medication at one time can lead to delays in the process. The highest level of patient engagement during the care process minimizes the stress level. Patient engagement solutions and predictive analytics track patient flow and reduce emergency department visits.
Medifusion provides leading patient engagement solutions for healthcare facilities of every size, from a solo practice to a healthcare facility.
