5 Best Visitor Management Practices for Hospitals and Clinics

When a patient or a visitor pays a visit to a hospital/clinic they are in a vulnerable state having faced with the one or other health complications. In such a situation, they except a personalised and warm welcome from the reception staff. Hence medical practitioners must pay due attention to create a lobby environment that facilitates the smooth check-in process. Hospitals are now lending utmost importance to visitor management practices to ensure the safety and security of the patients. The visitor management system for hospitals and clinics is an excellent means to streamline the visitor flows and keep track of visitor trends. Read on to learn about the best practices for visitor management in hospitals and clinics for optimal operation of healthcare facility and to keep your patients safe and secure.

Take Measures to Secure Personal Details

Patients come to the hospitals and clinics owing to personal ailments. The hospital management must take measures to ensure the personal details stay safe from the prying eyes of others and safeguard privacy. Access to personal details exposes the visitor’s deepest struggles. It is advisable for the reception staff to allow visitors to enter the details by themselves. In case, if the staff needs to call the visitors aloud, they should do so by calling by their first name rather than by full name. It is ideal to direct the visitors to enter the details on their own in the paper logs. If there is a visitor management system for clinics and Hospitals in place, the receptionist can guide the visitor accordingly to complete the registration process.

Implement a Training  Plan for Staff on Check-in Procedures

Hospitals need to implement a comprehensive training plan at a regular time period. Many healthcare facilities do not communicate properly with visitors and staff. The training should emphasise the importance of visitor management and elaborate more on the uses of a visitor management system.  The hospitals should maintain proper signage in place at important entry points to direct the visitors to the reception area. If there is a visitor management system in place, the signages should direct the visitors accordingly to carry self-registration.

Create a Calming Influence in Your lobby Area

As discussed earlier, visitors enter the lobby in a state of anxiety and depression. So, the hospitals/clinics can focus more on creating a soothing environment in the lobby area. You can adopt furniture and decor with soothing colours, matte finishes, nature-inspired designs which are proved to create a calming influence. Apart, there should be room for natural light coupled with soothing sounds. Also, pay due attention to the seating choices, so that the visitors feel comfortable.

Secure Unmanned Entrances

Document all entrances in the facility and devise a planned strategy to secure all of them. Some of them include the introduction of physical barriers/locks, at such entrances. Unmanned entrances pose potential security vulnerabilities to hospitals and clinics. The management must pay due attention to such vulnerable spots and take necessary action to secure them. Paper logbooks are bulky, costly and cause congestion in the reception area. On the flip side, the self-registration kiosks allow visitors to complete the registration process all by themselves.

Make Your Guests Wear a Visitor Badge

Whether your facility has an electronic or manual visitor management system, the visitor must be issued a visitor badge to wear while he is in the facility. The visitor badges contain the details of the visitor and facilitate the employees for easy identification. Further, there must be a system in place that ensures easier check-in and check-out for frequent or recurring visitors. By printing a barcode just beneath the visitor badges, they can check-in the facility with a simple scan.

Conclusion:

Managing a large number of visitors at the healthcare facility/clinic can be a daunting task. Further, they must keep a close eye on who is entering the facility and their reason for the visit. If the hospital management does not have a particular process in place for visitor management, it often causes inconvenience to the visitor. By adopting some of the best visitor management practices as mentioned above, Hospitals/Clinics can optimise security and offer convenient visitor management solution.