Being an aged care provider, it is extremely important to keep your residents safe. The recent pandemic has also further heightened the need for a simple yet secure way of managing visitors. Being able to effectively manage all foot traffic in and out of your facility continues to be high on the agenda to keep staff, patients, and the community safe.
With more people taking this chance to visit their senior loved ones, your facility is bound to face some issues with regulating the flow of visitors. Long queues, unhappy visitors, overworked staff all sound like a nightmare come true.
Not to mention, now is the age of innovation for aged care. Technology is becoming increasingly crucial to operating your establishment effectively and maintaining a high standard of care. Technology can help you efficiently track visitors, elevating facility safety and compliance while reducing overhead and administration costs.
It is essential your facility invests in modern and new technology solutions, including visitor booking systems, that let you more efficiently track people on site. Read on to find out how visitor booking systems will change the aged care industry, and your facility.
What are visitor booking systems?
Visitor booking systems are a small part of the giant that is visitor management. Visitor management essentially is the process of tracking and facilitating the admission and exit of all foot traffic in your facility. Such foot traffic is not just confined to visitors of your residents, however also extends towards contractors, clients, couriers and consultants of your business.
This visitor management system governs the entire process. It is a digital alternative or supplement to traditional visitor records.
In this case, a visitor booking system helps your facility manage the entry flow of visitors. Visitors to your facility do not have to queue at the entrance before entering. They can instead pre-book a slot online for visitation, and enter your facility in a breeze.
Visitor booking systems will allow your visitors to check on what slots are available for visitation, and book online. Through the online booking system, visitors can also fill up any pre-entry questionnaires at the comfort of their own home as well.
Now you understand what visitor booking systems are, let us dive right into how they will change the aged care industry.
No more long queues
For aged care facilities, visitors are constantly streaming in and out. With the heightened health alert and situation, aged care centres in Australia no doubt have more stringent entry requirements.
Long queues at entry points of your facility, overworked receptionists and unhappy visitors are what you want to avoid. Receptionists have to manually check each visitor is fully vaccinated, and are not displaying any symptoms of acute respiratory infection. Having to take the temperature of each and every visitor is bound to take up time as well.
Not to mention, the maximum visitors an aged care facility can allow in at one time has dramatically decreased. This means more unhappy visitors standing outside the facility, and less social distancing.
A visitor booking system can resolve this pain point effortlessly. The pre-booking feature allows visitors and guests to register their attendance prior to their arrival. This can effectively reduce their check-in time from a 5-10 minute process down to 1-2 minutes.
A well-polished visitor booking system allows your facility to customise the pre-booking and check-in flow to include all necessary steps. For example, the flow can be customised to include questions on whether the visitor has visited a COVID-19 hotspot, their health history, and to upload proof of vaccinations.
This feature of visitor booking systems allows your facility to have any necessary documents to be sent to visitors; such as an NDA, survey, or questionnaire, prior to the visit. You can then save both parties time and get more done during the visit.
No bulky technology
A visitor booking system is often made to integrate with existing technology. Your aged care facility is bound to have technology such as residential management systems that include; catering management, HR management and finance management. You most likely also have a visitor management system where you include records of all visitors to your facility.
The investment of a visitor booking system specifically designed for aged care facilities can bring much benefits. Such visitor booking systems are specially designed for the needs and requirements of the aged care industry. While mitigating the impacts of COVID-19 and the increased health requirements is difficult, having a visitor booking system will definitely make things easier.
A visitor booking system integrates check-in flow with facility capacity and health overview of the visitors. The final stage of the check-in process is often badge printing. Regardless of whether a visitor pre-registers or completes the check-in on arrival, customised ID badges can be printed in seconds as part of a modern visitor management solution.
A visitor booking system can generate a unique reference number and barcode for each visitor can be printed out. These ID badges can help identify visitors and give staff a peace of mind that everyone within the facility has been approved to enter.
For any future-proof solution out there, it is important to consider how well it will integrate with other solutions. Visitor booking systems in this case can integrate seamlessly with existing visitor management solutions to bring about a safer and more secure establishment.
Gain insights on visitor flow
Visitor booking systems can help with the creation of detailed visitor reports. These visitor reports can provide your facility with visual insights that help improve operational efficiency. Viitor booking systems can first and foremost, help keep track of all visitors; including their visit time, date, purpose, duration and other special accommodations.
With these data, you are able to classify these data into charts, to observe visitor trends and identify your peak hours. You are able to search and filter the data according to criteria such as:
- Visitor type
- Entry time
- Departure time
- Visitor name
- Access authorisation
These data can be provided in real-time to help security teams, receptionists, and other employees identify data trends. By identifying these visitor trends, management can decide on how to allocate resources in the most efficient manner.
Visitor behaviour analysis also involves keeping track of the quality of your service and the staff’s performance. By looking at the visitor’s duration of stay and any remarks, you will be able to identify possible issues with infrastructure that could be causing accessibility issues, and rectify it quickly. With these data, you can also communicate with individual visitors if the need for more in-depth feedback arises.
Visitor analysis also gives you a clear picture of how crucial areas like the entrance, first encounter with the staff, other visitors, and so on are performing.
As a leading aged care provider, with the help of visitor booking systems, these are all areas you can focus on with the aim of ensuring your visitors and residents are happy.
Achieve health and safety compliance
The rise of acute respiratory infections in elderly have caused restrictions in aged care centres to tighten considerably. Before entry into any aged care facility, visitors will need to declare their recent travel history, whether they are presenting any symptoms of illnesses, and present proof of vaccination.
For this reason, modern visitor booking systems include fully customisable check-in flows, not just for visitors, but for couriers, contractors and the like. For example, when a courier arrives on-site, they may be required to enter; company name, full name, delivery reference contact details and sign any required NDA’s inside the check-in process.
A visitor on the other hand, will have to enter their full name, purpose of visit, time slot of their visit, who they are visiting, relationship with the resident and more. All these check-in flows help ensure complete compliance with relevant state and national laws.
It is especially crucial for aged care centres to comply with regulations as they run the risk of being fined a hefty amount, and may have their operations and visitations temporarily suspended.
With a visitor booking system, aged care centres can ensure everyone who enters is fully authorised and are complying with national laws.
In a nutshell
Investing in a visitor booking system allows your aged care facility to elevate facility safety and compliance. At the same time, it also reduces overheads and administrative costs, while ensuring visitor and resident happiness.
The fully customisable nature of visitor booking systems will enhance your establishment; and change how aged care centres operate in today’s world.
About the author
Besides school and work, Venus spends her free time dancing (she has been a dancer for more than 10 years). She also enjoys spending time just chilling at home and hanging out with her friends.
