Consumer oriented healthcare using kiosks, portals, and bedside devices

Healthcare Informatics has a good article on Healthcare Customer Service using kiosks, portals, and bedside carts.

The move towards treating the patient as a true customer which has to be won over and catered is requiring new techniques and technologies; the old model of a patient who has no choice but to come to your facility is no longer the case.

Customer service, which has long held a back seat in our industry, is now more important than ever and as consumers continue to be empowered using physician ranking websites, hospital scoring companies, and specialty search engines it will be become paramount if a provider organization is to thrive. Consumers want their healthcare providers to woo them like their banks do and they want the service to match. Those that don’t provide it are doomed to mediocre revenue and low profits.

In healthcare, we have good customer loyalty when the care is good but service goes beyond care to convenience, scheduling, and information access.