FAST TRACK An admissions rep uses her portable workstation to register a patient at bedside.

ON-TIME STARTS
Bedside Check-In

Want to shave 30 to 45 minutes off your admission times and improve your first-case on-time starts? Register patients at bedside. After we give patients an armband, we bring them straight back to pre-op rather than asking them to take a seat in our waiting room. There, patients change into a gown and are met by an admissions rep. We equipped our admissions staff with mobile carts that contain everything they need to admit patients at the bedside.

This has been a huge patient satisfier. We used to tell our patients to arrive 3 hours before their scheduled start times (that meant an ungodly 4 a.m. check-in for a 7 a.m. start). We've since shortened their arrival time to 2 hours beforehand. Surgeons, of course, appreciate on-time starts as well. And our admissions reps are thrilled to be out of their cubicles and behind their workstations on wheels.

When we began the program in January, we reserved bedside check-in for the first and second cases of the day. Now we do it for all cases. Getting all the portable equipment to work was a challenge. We created a small workstation for our admissions reps so they're not standing around between patients. Keep in mind that bedside check-in might be an adjustment for your pre-op nurses, who aren't used to having patients in the bays so soon.

Cheryle Marie Smith, RN, MSN
Lakeland (Fla.) Regional Medical Center
[email protected]