Receptionist nurses can focus on critical admin tasks while NEC’s solution handles the tedious visitor check-in process.
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Background
Saving Hours by Streamlining Visitor Check-Ins
As the Sr. UX Designer on the Business Incubation team, I led a discovery engagement with a regional healthcare group overseeing multiple hospitals to showcase how NEC’s Visitor Recognition product streamlines visitor check ins. Resulting in freed up 7.5 hours for nurses to focus on critical administrative tasks and the client’s solution sign on.
The Process:
> User Interviews
> Journey Mapping
> Solution Workshop
> Process Blueprinting
> UI Design
The Challenge
NEC’s Visitor Recognition is a white label product that enables visitors to pre-enroll their facial biometrics via invitation, then upon arrival check in, on a tablet kiosk at the front desk. The challenge was to demonstrate how the solution unlocked value for the client and their users.
Capturing Today’s Reality
User Interviews
I started by interviewing nurses, inpatients (most accessible), and visitors involved in the visitor check in process. Their needs, frustrations, and interactions between each one were illustrated in a user persona & experience map (See Image A). This was foundational for creating a shared understanding of the user’s reality.
Key Insight
Nurses reported spending up to 15 minutes checking in each visitor, and with an average of 30 visitors per day, this adds up to 7.5 hours daily, significantly reducing the time available for critical administrative tasks.
Problem Definition
How might we simplify the inpatient visitor process to enable receptionist nurses to focus on essential administrative responsibilities?
We prioritized giving nurses their time back, as it presented a more compelling business case compared to enhancing the patient and visitor experience.
Solution Ideation
Workshop Facilitation
I facilitated an ideation workshop involving the clients healthcare SMEs along with my team. The goal was to co-create a solution.
I began by presenting the personas, their experience, and the problem statement. My partners gave an overview of NEC’s Visitor Recognition product.
Then, each participant was given blank paper to sketch their vision for a new step-by-step process , addressing the problem statement (See Image B) .
The New Check-In Process
After a multi-day workshop, we had a unified representation of the new visitor check in process leveraging NEC’s visitor product.
Unlocked User Value
The Value Chain
As the solution meets user needs, it unlocked a chain of benefits not just for users but for the business as well. This tree digram was use to highlight all benefits of the new process (See Image D).
Enabled Value Chain
Without the need to contact patients or handle visitor check-ins, nurses are able to maximize time of critical admin tasks.
1 Eliminate contacting patient to verify visitor relation and auth visitation.
2 Minimal time used to check-in and check-out visitors.
3 Maximize critical task completion i.e. billing and scheduling.
Conclusion
Our research demonstrated how NEC’s visitor solution could freed up to 7.5 hours valuable time for receptionist nurses to focus on core admin tasks. Resulting in the client’s approval for solution development. Next steps were followed with MVP design to start validation.
