King’s College Hospital Improves the Patient Experience in its Children’s Phlebotomy Department

Improving the patient experience

King’s College Hospital serves the populations of the inner London Borough of Lambeth, as well as acting as a tertiary referral center for certain specialties to the wider Southern England area. It offers a wide range of services including emergency care, neurology, and blood test labs. 

Many patients spend long amounts of time waiting for a variety of departments in hospitals which can be a very unpleasant experience, especially for children needing a blood test as part of their care. 

Laura Duffell, Children’s Ambulatory Matron at King’s College Hospital, explained how the children’s blood clinic was aiming to improve its processing of patients:

“There were a number of elements of the patient experience that we wanted to improve so that we could ensure the children and their families always had the best possible experience. Under our existing system, we didn’t have any reliable data on how long patients were waiting in a queue, how demand for phlebotomy services was fluctuating and the required staffing levels for phlebotomists. We needed a system that would enable us to track patients as they moved through the patient journey, monitoring how long they waited for and where they came from, if that was from GP referrals or other hospital departments, and whether the demand for phlebotomy services required additional staff.” 

Reducing Waiting Times

Qmatic implemented a comprehensive patient journey management solution that would reduce waiting times, improve the efficiency in which patients were processed, give staff vastly improved data visibility on their patients and give the children and their families an expectation of how long they will be waiting in a queue. 

Upon arrival at the blood test clinic, patients present themselves at the reception desk and Qmatic’s patient journey management solution generates a ticket for them to join the queue for the blood-testing service. Qmatic implemented digital signage in the waiting area which shows patients the number of tickets, the position of each ticket in the queue and which tickets have been called. Qmatic also supplied the blood clinic staff with a keypad to call the next patient into the room, using a voice announcement to direct them where to go. 

Data-driven results

The Qmatic solution has had an immediate impact on the efficiency of the phlebotomy department at King’s College London hospital, with the average time patients spend waiting in a queue for a blood test falling from 90 minutes to 20 minutes.

Laura explained the impact of the Qmatic solution: “The NHS is increasingly a data-led organization, and the Qmatic solution gives us the data we need to make necessary changes to staffing levels and processes that enable us to provide the very best patient experience. The feedback we have had from patients and their families has been immensely positive, and we are looking to integrate more services from Qmatic to further improve the patient experience.”