By Hari Prasad

Significantly amplified by the pandemic, the well-being of healthcare workers is an increasingly universal concern. The resulting staff shortages burdening all our healthcare professionals with elevated workloads and is sending shockwaves through the system.

Several recent studies indicate the healthcare industry has lost about 20% of its workforce over the past few years, including 30% of nurses, many of whom are aging out of the system and not being replaced by new recruits.

Last year, the pressure on front office administrative workers reached such alarming levels, the US Surgeon General issued an advisory. Staff burnout and accompanying resignations created a crisis in patient care and an urgent call for an intervention is being made.

A major contributing factor to staff burnout is the reduced staffing levels. The pandemic initiated many of these personnel shortages leaving the remaining staff to pick up the slack. As a result, administrative staff are stretched thin resulting in increased workloads and heightened stress levels.

The situation hasn’t eased much since the retreat of the pandemic. As a result, increased stress, fatigue, and emotional exhaustion are significantly impacting the mental health and well-being of healthcare workers. Combine this with a decreased sense of professional fulfillment and you have the recipe for burnout and, ultimately, resignation.

There is a bright spot on the horizon. Patient intake solutions have emerged as a powerful tool to help alleviate a significant part of the administrative burden. By streamlining a number of necessary but repetitive, tedious, burdensome waiting room processes, these solutions provide much-needed relief to healthcare workers and offer tangible benefits for both staff and patients.

How does that happen? A robust, configurable and advanced patient intake solution can optimize administrative workflows, resulting in significant time savings for healthcare professionals.

Traditional administrative tasks like patient intake, appointment scheduling, and patient communication are time-consuming and demanding for healthcare staff. Countless hours are spent on the phone, admitting patients, answering queries, and coordinating appointments transcribing information from the clipboard, collecting payments etc. These routine tasks, while essential, detract healthcare providers and staff from their core responsibilities of delivering quality care.


Although still used in most waiting rooms, patients hate filling out clipboards, kiosks, or tablets at the point of care. This inefficiency of point of care intake/registration systems is costing care centers 14 to 22 minutes per patient - not including the many ad-hoc issues that arise when forms aren’t filled in correctly or patients are unprepared. Often, a patient will arrive uneducated, unprepared, or unable to provide the information necessary to complete the administrative engagement prior to receiving care. Preventing this situation through a pre-arrival focused patient intake solution results in a much more efficient and seamless process for both patients and staff.

Eliminating the time spent on patient phone calls, in-person admissions and appointment scheduling, healthcare staff can allocate more time and energy to direct patient care. This increased focus on patient well-being enhances job satisfaction, reduces stress levels, and ultimately improves staff retention rates.

Patients are embracing the new technology because they want a great consumer experience. 83% of patients said they would prefer to complete all necessary paperwork before stepping into the hospital or medical practice office. They have also embraced the concept of patient self-scheduling, cutting down on the number of phone calls (and minutes) they need to spend with front office personnel.

Scheduling an appointment is first step in the care journey for many patients and most prefer to self-schedule for both efficiency and convenience. However, it’s often the responsibility of the administrative staff to vet, qualify and place the patient in the correct time slot, for the correct amount of time with the correct provider at the correct location based on organizational protocols and routines. Simply opening a calendar online falls short of the necessary elements required to properly schedule a patient.

Fortunately, some patient intake solutions provide an intuitive and user-friendly interface that allows patients to properly schedule appointments online. These advanced self-scheduling solutions automate the vetting process through configurable logistical question trees. The most advanced can help navigate patients with healthcare organizations that operate in multiple time zones. These solutions integrate with existing EMR scheduling calendars, ensuring that appointments are seamlessly updated in real-time. By eliminating the back-and-forth communication between patients and staff for scheduling purposes, valuable time is saved, and staff can focus on critical patient care.

By implementing healthcare technology such as mobile intake, self-scheduling, and contactless payments, your staff will reduce the time spent on manual tasks. This leads to improved efficiency, fewer errors, and increased availability for staff to concentrate on enhancing the patient experience.

About the author: Hari Prasad is pioneering the modernization of the entire healthcare patient experience. He is co-founder and CEO of Yosi Health, a full-service technology ecosystem that connects patients with their providers through the entire care journey before, during and after the visit creating delightful patient experiences.