Tired of Waiting in the Dark?

[flexmed]

WAITING IN THE DARK

Patients often sit in the waiting room
asking themselves these questions:

• When will it be my turn?
• How many people are in front of me?
• Did they forget about me?

Sitting there frustrated by these
questions, patients can interrupt the
medical staff to find out the answers or
simply leave without treatment.

With this said, I wanted to open a discussion about how this issue could be solved.  An idea could be to add a display (i.e. a flat panel TV) in the waiting room that would display the patients waiting in the “queue”. From this display, patients could see how many people are in front of them and get approximate wait-times.

What do you think of this idea?

[caraiti]

You certainly have a novel idea which could work but I have a few questions to your idea

* what if you are in a waiting room that runs more than one clinic
* how would it work if you have patients arriving 5 mins before their appointment?
* would it automatically adjust the queue to allow these people in? (after all their not late)
* where would the funding come from to make these idea a reality?

I'm not putting your idea down as I think its quite a novel idea that could go either way, but as a patient myself, It has me thinking of the various senarios that can or may occur.