St. John’s Medical Center: The Epitome of Patient-Centered Care

If the main qualities when looking for a clinic are professional service, educated team that you can trust and a safe environment that you can rely on, then St. John’s Medical Center is one of those places.

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• The medical center was experiencing a large number of visitors which made it hard to manually manage such flow while being efficient at the same time.
• SJMC understood that in order to provide an outstanding experience for its customers a better solution had to be found.
• The Qminder queue management software was implemented at the locations for a desired patient experience.
• Now, the visitors can self sign in, accelerating the waiting process while making their journey more clear and guided.
• With data and analytics at their side, hospital staff became more empowered while location managers made operational improvements based on data.
• With more than 150 daily visitors, St. John’s Medical Center managed to bring the average waiting time below 3 minutes.

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Meet the St. John’s Medical Center team

Locations: 1

Employees: 1,000+

Daily visitors: 150+

Average wait time: <3 mins

What used to be a hospital in 1916 became a fully-fledged medical center today, with expansive wellness and health services.

For St. John’s Medical Center, client satisfaction and comfort are the top priority. As such, the safety of the patients as well as service excellence is included in St. John’s five core values.

“St. John’s has long championed the values of personalized care. We don’t see you as just a patient, but a member of our community we can work with to create a customized, comfortable, and effective treatment plan.”

St. John’s is always on the search for innovative ways to make the patient experience trouble-free and smooth.

One of the ways the hospital is providing a comfortable and effective service to its customers is with the help of Qminder.

Need for improvement

SJMC has quite a busy atmosphere. In the year 2015, their medical staff performed 2,703 surgeries and delivered 467 babies. The hospital registered 1,847 admissions, with inpatient days totaling 5,261.

This many operations means that there is a number of patients waiting for their turn. Since the comfort of patients is important for SJMC, therefore, they wanted the waiting experience to be as smooth as possible. Previously, the patients had to go to the reception, fill in personal information and wait in the waiting area.

Naturally, with such a busy service flow, patients wanted to know how much longer their wait time would be and kept inquiring about it, making it an extra hassle for the medical staff.

Keeping in mind the order of the patients was the sole responsibility of a receptionist. It goes without saying that when there are many visitors waiting for their turn, getting the order mixed up is natural.

SJMC wanted to fix the issue and keep its patients mobile rather than waiting anxiously, chair-bound. There was a need for something new and innovative that would handle the problem while providing a pleasant experience.

After implementing the Qminder queuing system

St. John’s Medical Center has been using Qminder for four years, and from the get-go they saw the value that the Qminder queue management system brings to the table.

Contrary to the past, now the clerks have a clear view and information regarding every customer. Their name, the reason for the visit and most importantly their place in the queue.

The transparency of the system is what attracted the hospital. Qminder empowers employees with customer information and supplies managers with staff performance metrics.

However, what makes SJMC so patient-oriented is that they always keep seeking for additional opportunities and possibilities for improving the visitor experience. The analysis of the patient’s journey experiences revealed that the sign-in processes had to be revamped and improved.

First things first, the hospital values the time of the visitors and does its best so that patients will not waste time due to uncertainty.

Hospital’s guiding principle is to make the visiting process as easy as possible for the patients. Because of this, they simplified the self sign-in procedure by offering different service line options with consideration to the patient’s needs. Some of the line options are:

• I need to get a test done
• I need to schedule an appointment
• I need to pay my bills
• I have a billing question

But what happens after this? Maybe a visitor does not want to sit and wants to walk instead, perhaps even use a cafeteria or bathroom during the waiting time.

The benefits of using a digital queuing system

In order to promote the mobility of patients, the hospital started using the Qminder text message notifications, which allow to send automated messages to visitors notifying them of their turn.

With such services, patients can now go to the cafe or move around the facility without worrying about missing their turn.

There is nothing more frustrating than waiting for a service and then getting forwarded to another where you have to provide the same information again. SJMC did not want their visitors to have the same issue and saw the answer to this problem in Qminder.

With the visitor forwarding option that Qminder provides, you can redirect your patients to a new line without the hassle of inputting their details again.

Visitor forwarding has proved to be useful when providing more complex experiences and multiple services. Now, the visitors at SJMC can go to the forwarded room without checking in with the receptionist again.

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Bottom line is, great medical services do not excuse poor customer experiences. St. John’s Medical Center understands it, which is why they have brought their overall service to the next level with Qminder.

There are lessons to be learned from SJMC — the most important being that your customers and their experiences matter, and that the level of your care is not limited to the quality of your health services.

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