or by accessing one of the many patient / member
kiosks conveniently located throughout the provider’s
campus, walkways, grounds and structures.
again, predetermined by the patient/member within
their system profile. The member’s appointment
coordinator will also receive confirmation of their
arrival for the purpose of managing the appointment
for a better patient experience.
The enhanced member/patient experience is also
being extended to in-hospital, overnight stays with
non-traditional meal services that includes on-
demand ordering, late meal service, and a focus on
restaurant quality plates.
The healthcare member will be provided with a status
on today’s visit, current wait times for the doctor, lab
appointments, radiology studies, and even outpatient
surgery. No longer will the patient run to get into the
waiting room only to find they are fifth in line to see
the doctor. They’ll have time to slow down, visit the
lobby, the onsite pharmacy (the one with the cold
drinks and snacks) or just move through the building
or campus with no rush.
It’s hard to believe that healthcare providers are
just now catching up to airlines, the department of
motor vehicles, and of course with the Apple Store
experience when it comes to proactive extended
wait time notifications. The new normal will consist
of proactive notification which includes updates if
a doctor is called away on an emergency, or just
lengthy wait times with prior appointments. These
notifications will be set up in the patient/member’s
profile for email, text, or a good old-fashioned
phone call. Several providers have already taken this
to the next level, such as if a cancellation occurs,
the patient/member will be notified of the earlier
appointment opportunity also defined in the patient’s
profile.
A patient has the ability to create their account
profile to message a contact or list of contacts
(and loved ones) for the purpose of attending an
appointment, helping to coordinate transportation,
and receive patient status reports and test results,
should the contact be cleared to that level of security,
6
Patients and their families are treated to an
enhanced and expanded entertainment and
connectivity experience with guest access allowing
unrestricted connections for real-time video
streaming and provider access to what seems to
be an endless library of programming and movie
options, regardless if connecting with in-room
monitors or the ever growing bring your own device
guest connections.
This connectivity is both robust, reliable and
ultimately secure to meet and exceed HIPAA
requirements regardless of which network segment
is being used. This is all accomplished via one of the
many healthcare campus’ optical fiber rings that
are easily managed for throughput and security.
This network segregation into multiple rings, are
each individually monitored for traffic peaking which
is critical to maintain the demand for the highest
quality and availability for the patient experience,
but also to protect the healthcare data and the
requirement to provide all staff and clinicians with
maximum uptime and constant connectivity.
The new normal will consist of proactive
notification which includes updates
if a doctor is called away on an
emergency, or just lengthy wait times
with prior appointments.
These newly segmented but individual ring topologies
will be added to the current single-star environment
with minimal expansion effort and cost, yet they
provide additional security and reliability. Yes, this
will require additional hardware and staff to monitor
and manage the traffic, but healthcare providers are