The Clinical Problem - Ensuring Privacy
Imagine you run a state-of-the-art private diagnostics and treatment clinic. Your consulting rooms are specially designed to provide maximum privacy levels, which means they are sound-proofed and absent any windows or door-portholes. How can others know if such a consulting room is busy or empty?
Room privacy is vital in a health care setting. The last thing any clinician or patient wants is to have someone thoughtlessly enter a room in the middle of a consultation or examination.
One Stop Doctors, a pioneering clinic north of London faced this dilemma and set this challenge for our team: how can the Door Tablet scheduling system accurately tell us if a room is occupied or empty?
Clearly, staff need to know if a particular room is being used - but if they can neither hear sounds coming from behind the closed door, nor see any figures in the room, it is not easy to ascertain. They need also to be very careful about simply knocking on the door or entering the room to find out.
Standard digital signage outside of the room may help, but traditional systems merely display if a room should be free, based on schedule, not whether it is actually free or not.
The Treatment
The solution came due to the integration of Door Tablet motion sensors for managing meeting room bookings. Installing motion sensors into the consulting room ceilings enabled the discreet devices to signal the Door Tablet system whether a room is being used or not, based on detecting movements within that room.
Motion sensors in the consulting room ceilings enabled the Door Tablet system to know if a room is being used
This information can then be displayed on Door Tablet screens outside the room and appropriate privacy messages can be given, e.g. "In Use - Do Not Disturb" or "In Use - Please Knock" etc. Importantly, these messages are in realtime since they are based on a continuous analysis of what is actually happening within the room.
Adding this innovative functionality to Door Tablet's already extensive workspace management and meeting room booking capabilities was just what the doctor ordered for One Stop Doctors. Together, we achieved a world-first in addressing the challenges of consultation room privacy.
Acoording to the clinic's IT Director, "The installation was easy and straightforward, and the effects both immediate and transformational.
The installation was easy and straightforward, and the effects both immediate and transformational
"Door Tablet's solution fitted in instantly: easy in terms of staff training, and a professional-looking solution in all of the 18 consulting rooms involved," he reports.
Beyond solving the privacy issue, Door Tablet helped One Stop Doctors efficiently manage all their rooms and workspaces. "In these first few months since installation, we have seen room occupancy rates increase by 75% while administration distraction in managing our room bookings has eased up considerably. We are so happy with this solution that we even put a story about it in our internal newsletter!"
In these first few months since installation, we have seen room occupancy rates increase by 75% while administration distraction in managing our room bookings has eased up considerably.
Door Tablet Company CTO, Avi Tchiprout, was pleased that the clinic had chosen a privacy solution that is effective but also fits in perfectly with One Stop Doctors' elegantly crafted service proposition. In addition, he sees it as pointing a valuable way forward for healthcare generally.
"Healthcare as a service industry is becoming more responsive to the needs of all its stakeholders: patients, customers, visitors and indeed its employees," Avi says, "Comfort and discretion are vital ingredients of world-class health service delivery, and we are happy to have found in One Stop Doctors a clinical service provider with such a commitment to innovation and to finding new and better ways of designing the care settings of the future."
How Can We Help You?
If you run a healthcare facility, then Door Tablet offers you the following benefits:
- Privacy in rooms
- Integration with the existing scheduling infrastructure
- Increased efficiency in utilizing rooms and spaces
- Messaging on the display devices when rooms not in use
- Multi-room schedule displays
- Wayfinding displays
- Web-browser Floor Plan with real-time usage exposure for head nurse or receptionist
See here for more information on our room booking software.
Visit One Stop Doctors site - www.onestopdoctors.co.uk