Patient Intake Process Essay

The patient intake process, simply said, is the process of taking information to establish new patients into your facility. This process is almost never the same between facilities, however no matter how it is done, it is very time consuming. The process can also involve updating already established patient’s information. You do this simply by reviewing their information with them to make sure that it is all the same. Once they are finished providing you with any new or updated information it will need to be entered manually into your computer system for future reference. All new patients will have multiple forms and consents to complete before they are able to visit with that physician. These forms mainly consist of their demographic
When I worked at a medium size facility as a secretary on the medical/surgical/pediatrics I noticed that the nurses had so many jobs. They were expected to take care of the patient, enter full notes, fill out a Kardx (paper based information system for all nurses) admit their patients, discharge their patients, contact doctors for any consultations, and more. To me, this is way too much for a nurse to do. Nurses are our primary care givers at a hospital. Most doctors visit once to twice during a stay and the rest of the time our lives are in our nurse’s care. When your nurse has 1,000 tasks on her plate how is she supposed to give you her full care? I feel that if it is this way at one hospital it is this way at more than one hospital! Because of this, if I was to change something with the patient intake process I would change the load that everyone carries. I feel that the work load on nurses should be professionally evaluated and cleared by the boards. The work load of nurses being lightened is going to put more work onto the patient intake process. I feel that that should be fine as long as the system that you have in place is already running