Evoke on trial at West Suffolk Hospital

Publication Date:  10 November 2011

Sited in a day clinic and running patient check in software, self service kiosks claim to deliver productivity gains for the clinic team as staff no longer need to check patients in, add them to system and equipment lists, or locate and escort them to their appointment.

In addition they claim to improve the patient's experience through reduced queuing, acknowledgement of arrival, provision of estimated waiting time, and providing directions.

Over the summer West Suffolk NHS Hospital put these claims to the test by installing an Evoke ev3 kiosk running HD Clinical Solus software in the Cardiology Department of West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St. Edmunds.

The trial ran for three months and during this period patient usage ran at 80%. The large majority using the kiosk to scan the barcode on their appointment letter providing fast and accurate information for the department.

In a survey of patients undertaken on completion of the trial over 80% of respondents rated their experience as Excellent/Good.

Kyle Marchant, Deputy Manager of Diagnostic Cardiology Services commented that, "Interaction with patients during their appointments in our department have been overall very positive regarding the bar code/kiosk system and the electronic check in process", and went on to say, "overall it has been a very positive process and the staff are pleased with it."

Calculations undertaken by the department's management team following the trial concluded that the single kiosk had saved the department around 60 man hours over the three month period.

Following the trial the kiosk was retained and based on the previous figures will have saved the department in the order of 140 man-hours to date.