The flow can be customised
Since v4 of the app, check-in can be configured in the following ways:
The initial kiosk screen / welcome screen can be configured.
The initial check-in method can be switched from date of birth to mobile number.
An optional fallback check-in method can be specified (e.g. if no appointments for the specified date of birth were found, the mobile number can be used to match an appointment instead)
The default date for DOB check-in can be configured.
You can optionally turn off intervention / name hiding on forms.
You can optionally require patient initials to match an appointment (first, last, or both names)
The "no appointment found" and "you're checked in" screens can be configured.
Multiple form requirements can be specified for each different type of appointment.
Initial kiosk / welcome screen
The heading is displayed in large text and animates between the comma-separated words. With the configuration above, the heading will say "Hello", then "Hi there", then "Check in", and so on. These should be short, quick words that are easy to read and that will gently grab someone's attention. Feel free to change these or add more to your liking.
The message is displayed in smaller text and doesn't animate. You use this as a place to provide more info once you've gotten the patient's attention to explain what they should do (i.e. check in).
Here's how the above configuration will look on the welcome screen:
Check-in flow
The check-in flow is now very flexible. At the risk of overwhelming you, here are all the settings. Note: the configuration below is not the default, I just wanted to show you one of the possibilities:
So what do each of those settings do?
How do you want a patient to first check in?
Hopefully this one's obvious — when someone gets past the welcome screen and starts checking in: how are they asked to do it? You can choose either by their date of birth (default) or using their mobile number.
Note: You can specify a fallback option as well — so if you ask for DOB check-in, and no appointments are found, you can configure it to ask for their mobile number instead.
Initial date of birth
The original version of our self check-in locked in the initial date of birth as 01/01/1950. Now, you decide the initial date of birth — so if you're seeing mostly younger patients, you can set this much closer to their date of birth.
This configuration option only appears directly after the choice to allow check-in by DOB. If you don't allow check-in with DOB, this option won't be shown.
If no appointment was found, what should happen next?
This is the where you can specify a fallback check-in method. If you chose to allow them to check in with their mobile number first, you can choose DOB here — or vice-versa.
Staff intervention
In previous versions, we would always hide the name of the patient during form filling via self check-in. We did this so that, in the unlikely case that a patient chose the wrong appointment to check into, we had an additional check to stop the patient from potentially overwriting patient data, and signing on behalf of a someone for which they didn't have authority to sign. How we did this was by comparing the entered-in name against the name on the patient record, and having the iPad tell the patient to ask for assistance if they were different — stopping them in their tracks.
This new option allows you to turn this behaviour off — so that you can require no intervention at all. That means the name will be shown during form filling via self check-in, and the patient will always be allowed to complete the form.
Patient initials
If you do decide to turn off intervention, then we highly recommend you ask for the first letter of either the first, last, or both names. This just adds an extra level of security in that case.
Screen configuration
I won't say too much about these, as they're self explanatory.
That concludes the configuration — next up, form requirements!