Kiosks check in at medical facilities

At some of Adventist Health Systems' 37 facilities, the approximately four million patients that come through its doors each year have access to a self-service device. The kiosks automate tasks such as online scheduling, bill payment and registration. A technology called eSignature, part of the kiosk, allows Adventist to authenticate and store documents that require a signature, making the workflow paperless.

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Her company has been setting up kiosks at two or three organizations each week. Some of those organizations are looking for up to 300 kiosks.

"We see the growth of this to continue to scale for the next three to five years," she said. "The market for this is exponential."

At Adventist Health Systems, which uses NCR Corp.'s MediKiosk, four facilities have 16 kiosks dedicated to self-check-in, said Bill Tyler, director of patient access and health information management applications at the Florida-based organization. Three more facilities are coming online soon. The other 19 facilities he is responsible for will be using the kiosks within a year.

"We're pretty much expecting 100 percent adoption in the registration portion," he said of Adventist facilities.

At their facilities with kiosks, every patient signs a three-page document that is required but patients don't need or want a copy of it. Scanning the pages was the sole responsibility of a full-time employee,

"There really is a tremendous savings," Tyler said, noting saved printing, personnel and storage costs.

Patients are ready and willing to use a kiosk, Tyler said, noting its ability to shorten lines and free up registration staff so they can focus on patients with special concerns. Traditionally, 95 percent of the time a patient spent at the registration desk was dedicated to answering a clerk's routine questions.

NCR touts a 50 percent cut in check-in time for new patients as a 75 percent cut for existing patients through its solutions.

Adventist customers were quick to use Web applications that allow them to take care of medical business at home, Tyler said, further illustrating customer demand.

"Without us even promoting it, they were on our Web sites, fining it, using it," Tyler said.

Self-service provides a good return on investment for the organization, he said, but it's also something patients expect. It compliments medical advances, adding to an organization's reputation for offering the latest in medical care and giving the organization another way to differentiate itself from the competition.

NCR touts a 50 percent cut in check-in time for new patients as a 75 percent cut for existing patients through its solutions.

The kiosk was developed specifically for the health care industry and offers a wide range of peripherals and configurations that can be used to meet a particular facility's unique needs.

For example, some hospitals need a monitor overlay to protect patient privacy and, perhaps, use a second screen above the filtered one for marketing. Some need WiFi. Others need a function that can identify the patient by reading a magnetic card or a fingerprint. The kiosk can also offer printers that use letter paper while others employ only paper for a standard receipt.

Health care providers take hundreds of millions of appointments per year, Nix said. Most of D2 Sales' clients think 25 to 30 percent of their patients will check in at a kiosk, she said, and D2 Sales' research shows that to be a conservative figure.

While medical advances and new technology have improved much of the actual care patients receive, the check-in process had evolved little if at all, said Chakri Toleti, NCR's vice president of industry marketing for healthcare and the public sector.

"It's a very manual process even today in the majority of the hospitals. It hasn't changed in 20, 30 years," said Toleti.

Self-service applications automate the process, making it less laborious and less error-prone, he said.

Kiosks also improve service by communicating in five or six different languages and eliminating costly duplicate records, Toleti said.

Now, kiosks are predominantly used in hospitals, placed in a few hundreds of America's 6,000 hospitals, Toleti said. There is significant interest in large and small facilities, he added.

There seems to be no limit on how deep self-service will penetrate the healthcare industry.

This is the beginning, Nix said, noting the self service trend now seen in hospitals and clinics could be picked up in other areas of the larger healthcare field such as dental and veterinary.

At some point, its possible hospital systems will communicate with insurance companies so that, for example, a patient standing at a hospital kiosk will see what portion of their bill is covered by their insurance company, Tyler said.