The waiting room is an essential part of the healthcare facility experience. It’s the first space that patients and visitors interact with, making it one of the most important areas in any healthcare facility. However, many waiting rooms are plagued by uncomfortable chairs, bland paints, and too many people. These can all give patients the wrong impression of your ambulatory healthcare facility, no matter how good your healthcare performance is. So, the key to upgrading your patient experience is upgrading your patient waiting room. You’d be surprised what kinds of changes can have the biggest impact on your patient experience. Ambulatory care facility development firm, Simone Health, discusses three ways to transform your waiting room below.
- Self-Check in Kiosks: Self-serve kiosks have become staple pieces inside airports, banks, and entertainment venues. Their convenience is undeniable, and they add speed and a feeling of modernity to any space they occupy. The healthcare industry has recently been opening up to self-check in kiosks, using them to make the patient registration process faster, alongside digital consent forms, payments, and foreign language translations. These kiosks will not only bring the waiting times down, but offer improved convenience and additional privacy for patients, improving patient satisfaction. In addition, self-service kiosks also save hundreds of sheets of paper, reducing your facility’s carbon footprint.
- Make it Child Friendly: Waiting room areas can be a stressful, anxious space, for adults and children alike. However, any scared or anxious child will be a lot more noticeable in a waiting room filled with adults and intimidating fixtures. Ease anxious children by fitting your waiting room space with a children’s play area, giving them a familiar, fun space to chill-out and feel more comfortable in. Children’s play areas have been shown to reduce waiting room anxiety, in addition to giving the parents a place to supervise their kids while they fill out forms or take care of additional healthcare information.
- Open Space Concept: Many healthcare facilities struggle with their floor plans. Embrace an open-space concept to not only make the space feel larger, but to allow patients to see the front desk the minute they walk-in. Not only will patient satisfaction improve, but also staff production rates since being in a more airy, well-lit space avoids feelings of fatigue. Knock down those walls and feel how your space changes!
“There are a lot of different ways to improve your healthcare facility’s waiting room area. Explore other options and find what transformative concepts fit the best for your space and patient needs,” said Joe Simone, President of Simone Development Companies.