Intouch implements first patient appointment management solutions in Australia

Answering the call for a digital approach to patient flow management in Australia, Intouch with Health has helped two hospitals ‘down under’ with the initial stages of their digital patient flow transformation projects.

The first-stage projects, which are our inaugural deployments in Australia, have taken place at both the Royal Hospital for Women and The Eye Clinic at the Prince of Wales Hospital. Both of these hospitals are part of the South Eastern Sydney Local Health District (SESLHD).

The Eye Clinic at the Prince of Wales Hospital

At The Eye Clinic, patients are making good use of new patient self check-in kiosks, where they use their Medicare card, barcoded appointment letter or demographic details to check-in for their appointment without receptionist assistance.

In the first two days of being used, the hospital patient self check-in kiosks were used by over 70% of patients to indicate arrival for their hospital appointment.

The hospital’s staff are also using our digital solution to mark patients as ‘ready for clinician’ and then ‘seen clinician’ once their appointment is complete. Plans are also afoot for The Eye Clinic to deploy Intouch’s digital Clinic Performance Manager module that will enable teams to review and evaluate clinic waiting times and assess efficiency levels to make further improvements.

Royal Hospital for Women

Patient self check-in kiosks have also been installed at the Antenatal clinic at the Royal Hospital for Women. Similarly, patients use their Medicare card, appointment card or demographic details to check themselves in digitally for an appointment.

Intouch’s Hospital Patient Calling module has also been installed, allowing patients to watch the screen and wait to be called to their clinic room for consultation. This digital patient calling solution replaces the hospital’s previous method of using a receptionist to take the appointment card and place it on a tray outside each consultation room – helping to reduce their workload and create efficiency and productivity gains.

Clinicians can then call a patient digitally, triggering an alert on the waiting are screens for the patient to proceed to the clinic room.

The future at SESLHD

Intouch is already working on how it can transform SESLHD’s management of administration and billing using a digital solution, in addition to plans for further digital transformation work. Please monitor our site for future updates.