According to the CDC, on average, there are more than 136 million visits to the emergency room every single year in the United States. Many visits range from small minor medical emergencies to large and possibly fatal emergency visits. Whatever the condition is, it is critical that patients are seen as soon as possible to prevent their medical condition from worsening. The problem is that there is never enough staff available to help everyone in the hospital setting. There is always a delay and or waiting time in order to get seen, depending on your medical condition. Most emergency rooms will see patients depending on their level of pain and or condition. If your medical condition if life threatening, most patients will be seen almost immediately to help relieve their symptoms. However, most patients end up waiting for a significant amount of time even to be seen for their condition, therefore the staff are not even aware of their condition until they are able to get checked in. They could be losing precious time waiting to get checked in. All hospitals and medical facilities should have a medical kiosk system in place in order to expedite medical care to those who need it the most.
According to Web MD, when going to the emergency room for a medical emergency you want to make sure that you have all of your information and medical history readily available to dish out. When you visit the emergency room, the staff or a medical kiosk is going to ask you a list of questions as a part of the check in process. It is important for the emergency room to have this pertinent information to properly give you the care you need. Without this information, getting seen could possibly be delayed and your life could possibly be at risk. Before you go to check in to the emergency room, you want to make sure that you have: a list of all medication you are taking and or prescribed medication given to you by all doctors you are seeing, notify them of all and any allergies you may have, especially to medications, past surgeries, chronic illnesses, vaccinations you have had as well as the contacts for any specialists that you have been seeing. Having this information readily available could possibly expedite the process to get the treatment you need, especially in the emergency room.
All hospitals should have a medical kiosk system to speed up the process. Many times, you arrive to the emergency room and you are in eager need to get treatment. However, you come into the emergency room and find yourself stuck in line waiting to talk to a nurse to get checked in. Usually, the Emergency room will require to have a brief introduction and or medical history about your medical condition in order to get checked in. If a medical kiosk exists in the emergency room, it would make things run a lot more smoothly. A health kiosk system would definitely help speed up the process for patients to get seen because they would be answering questions on their own in the system and could reduce the errors of wrong information communicated.
Overall, having a better system in place in the emergency rooms could possibly help save more lives. When you are facing a medical problem, you don’t usually have the patience to wait and or to spend a lot of time answering questions. If you had a computer or a kiosk to simply fill out all the answers yourself, the staff would be more likely able to help you get the treatment you need much faster.