Over the last decade, healthcare has been significantly shifting towards digital solutions. In addition to digitizing patient records and care, healthcare facilities also incorporate digital signage into their waiting rooms, lobbies, and patient rooms.
These signs improve the guest experience while saving staff valuable time. In the healthcare field, digitization can help in many ways. Here’s how.
1 Guide Guests to Their Destinations
Hospitals, particularly those in major cities, can be pretty significant and complicated to navigate without help. Hospitals lose hundreds of thousands of dollars every year because guests are lost and need help getting to their destination. Furthermore, poor wayfinding has a negative effect on the patient and guest experience.
One of the most beneficial uses of digital signage in healthcare is wayfinding. Signs placed at entrances and in corridors can help people navigate hospitals quickly and easily.
For example, digital wayfinding displays can help guests find:
- Waiting areas
- Specific rooms
- Wings or units of the hospital
- Reception areas
If room or wing locations should change at any point, digital signs make it easy to update this information without investing in new signage.
Doctor’s offices and clinics can also be challenging to navigate, primarily when multiple offices are housed in a single building. Digital signs can let guests know where the appropriate office is located and how to get there.
When patients and guests can quickly get to their destinations without assistance, staff can focus on patient care and other essential tasks.
2 Reduce Waiting Room Anxiety
Waiting rooms can make guests and patients feel anxious, especially when they feel unwell. Providing a distraction can help guests and patients relax while waiting to be seen or hear news about their loved ones.
Digital signage can be informative and serve as a distraction (or form of entertainment) in waiting rooms.
Digital signs can:
- Let patients know when it’s their turn to be seen.
- Provide status updates to family members in surgical waiting rooms.
In the case of status updates, hospitals can use assigned numbers instead of patient names to inform family members while protecting privacy.
Additionally, these signs can provide entertainment to guests and patients to make their waiting room stay a little less overwhelming.
3 Share Information Across Hospital Staff
Digital displays can also help streamline and improve patient care by allowing doctors, nurses, and other hospital staff to share important information.
For example, digital signs outside of a patient room can list vital information about the patient, such as:
- Allergies
- Quarantine or isolation status
Nurse stations can use digital signs to inform other staff members of which nurses are on duty, shift changes, and which nurses should be paired with certain patients.
4 Modernize Hospital Cafeterias
Hospital cafeterias should provide staff and visitors with a bit of respite from the stresses of work or waiting for a loved one’s treatment. Proper menu signage can make it easy for guests to see what’s available and place their orders without having to disrupt cafeteria staff.
Digital menu boards allow hospitals to provide vibrant menu displays that can be updated quickly and efficiently when needed. Digital signs are easy to read and easily visible from a distance, making it easier for staff and visitors to make their choices.
A digital menu also allows the hospital to display colorful photos of the food they offer to help guests make ordering decisions.
5 Communicate With Visitors in Real-Time
One of the most significant advantages of digital signage is that the content can be updated quickly and easily with no additional investment. This means communicating with patients in real-time for hospitals, doctor’s offices, and other healthcare facilities.
Digital signage allows healthcare facilities to:
- Inform patients about procedures or protocols
- Provide information about emergencies
- Give status updates on patients
- Let patients know when it’s their turn to be seen
When healthcare facilities need to communicate with guests, they can do so with digital signage and in real-time.
Digitization and digital signage can help healthcare facilities provide better care, save time and ensure that guests get where they need to go quickly and easily. Messages can be communicated in real-time, and waiting room guests have peace of mind that they’ll receive updates on their loved ones. Having the ability to update the content on digital signage makes it an even more attractive and beneficial investment for healthcare facilities.
