Montpellier University Hospital Improves the Patient Experience with Qmatic

Modernizing the reception experience

The newly updated reception area had MiPih touchscreen kiosks at the heart of it, allowing patients and visitors to check in themselves, receive a ticket number, and find out exactly where to go, reducing the workload of the reception staff and mitigating queues as much as possible.

To make these kiosks smarter, MiPih implemented Qmatic’s Orchestra platform to provide powerful data and analytics capabilities, as well as the enhanced queue management functionality it offers. The implementation was simple and made it possible for ticket numbers to automatically be matched to the appropriate service desk.

All a patient has to do, after arranging their appointment at home, is identify themselves at a reception kiosk using their ‘Carte Vitale’ national healthcare card. They simply scan the card and the system will automatically recognize and admit them. If a problem with their record emerges, the system directs the patient through Qmatic’s queue management system to a staffed reception desk.

Once they have been admitted, the system will direct the patient to their required medical service and inform the department that the patient is in the hospital and on their way.

The results of the change have proven positive. Before, the average waiting time in reception was 20 minutes, which the hospital wanted to decrease to improve the patient experience. The average time has been driven down significantly, with 35% of patients now checking in through the kiosks, a number that is likely to increase as the systems become more normal to the patients.

Providing more than kiosks

Although improving the experience for patients was the natural goal of the project, the enhanced data capture, and analysis capabilities, offered by the Orchestra platform implementation into MiPih kiosks, gave CHU de Montpellier the opportunity to improve the experience and capabilities of their staff too.

The live tracking of patient numbers, made possible by Qmatic, can be broken down by department, so the hospital can quickly redirect resources to cope with spikes in demand. They can also track their records to better predict when certain departments are going to be in high demand, so they can allocate staff numbers more appropriately.

There has also been an improvement in the quality of medical records as reception staff can provide additional support to ensure records are updated efficiently, reducing future patient delays.

Overall, technology integration has meant that hospital staff can spend more on important tasks and on looking after patients, without having to worry about minor issues that reduce their efficiency. For example, as patients now receive instructions on how to find their way to the department they need, staff no longer waste time checking whether patients have actually arrived in the hospital or looking for those who have not shown up yet.

The University Hospital of Montpellier has benefitted from the new capabilities in its reception and has installed this system in 2 of its 4 facilities and is continuing the roll-out. In the end, 2,500 to 3,000 people per day will benefit from this service.