A new and revolutionary electronic patient triage system will reform the check-in process for patients visiting the DHU Healthcare-run Corby Urgent Treatment Centre.
Designed to ensure the most unwell patients are seen as quickly as possible, whilst allowing patients to share information important to their care. The system will see the installation of five eTriage kiosks, provided by eConsult, that patients can use to enter their details and reason for attendance in a private and confidential manner. This information then goes directly to the clinical teams who can see, at a glance, the reason for your visit and the assigned triage category.
Faster and prioritised assessment
Dr Sole Garcia is DHU Clinical Director for Urgent and Emergency Care, she said: “We have already seen the difference that this system can make to our patients and colleagues, having introduced to our UTCs at Loughborough and Derby. They have ensured that multiple patients can be booked in and assessed quickly, helping to reduce waiting times for triage and queueing at the reception desk. It also means that we can identify the patients most in need of treatment straight away and very quickly prioritise their care.
“It’s important to ensure people get the right care at the right place and this system helps us to identify and give advice to those patients who would be more appropriately treated by a different healthcare service. This could be a pharmacist in the least urgent cases or the emergency department in the most serious instances, ensuring we can use the health system more appropriately.”
Patients will be asked to input their details into the kiosks through specific questions about their condition, written and designed specifically by urgent and emergency expert clinicians. The answers will provide clinicians with the information needed to organise and improve the flow of patients, highlighting the more serious cases as well as important information that patients wish to share.
Complements our clinicians
Adele Peck is DHU’s Head of Clinical Services she added: “It complements our team of clinicians and streamlines the booking-in procedure for patients. The process is straightforward and alongside the standard questions such as name, age and date of birth, patients will systematically be asked questions about their general health, medical history, specific symptoms and how and when they became apparent.
“The questions and follow-up questions based on those responses follow a logical pathway and include certain responses that will alert our clinicians to escalate immediately. It has also been tried and tested and the response from patients and clinicians has been incredible, so much so we plan to roll it out further.”
The process should only take patients a few minutes to complete, the kiosks have privacy screens to respect patients’ confidentiality, one of the kiosks is specifically designed with accessibility in mind and there will be a receptionist to answer any queries, concerns and help to support the check-in process.
Once complete, the patient will then be asked to take a seat and wait in the reception area for treatment or, in some cases, be referred to a more appropriate place for their treatment.
