SEMBACH, Germany – Regional Health Command Europe is standardizing the check-in process in Military Treatment Facilities throughout Europe to enhance communication with patients and improve availability of information in patient waiting areas.
“Q-Flow, the Patient Queuing and Notification System, replaced the old ‘pull a ticket’ or sign-in logs/sheets,” said Annmarie Schultz, RHCE’s Business Process Manager. “The Defense Health Agency has provided a model that will now standardize Q-Flow. The goal is to provide the same patient experience in every MTF.”
Benefits of Q-Flow include the ability for a patient to select if the appointment is for themselves or a child and use the barcode on their Q-Flow tickets to "self-route" themselves to a new clinic. Additionally, if a patient needs to leave the waiting area for some reason, and their number is called, they can scan their ticket again and the system will add them back to the queue. In addition, if a patient’s ticket is called before they arrive at a clinic, they can scan the bar code of the ticket at a kiosk and it will reactivate that ticket.
Initial deployment of the software began in January 2014 with Landstuhl Regional Medical Center and continued on to U.S. Army Medical Department Activity Bavaria throughout 2014. There are now 36 kiosks in 12 different locations.
The system update will begin with MEDDAC Bavaria and continue to the LRMC area. Patients will be required to make a few additional selections at the kiosk, but these additional clicks are to manage patient wait times. Due to the time it take to make the configuration changes, it is expected that this change will not be completed until September.