As a veterinarian, you provide clients and pets with the best possible experience at your clinic. That includes a smooth, timely, and low-stress waiting room experience. Nevertheless, some factors are beyond your control.
Even in a well-designed waiting room with an attentive and helpful staff, some pets (and their owners) get anxious. Bad waiting room experiences are stressful for everybody: staff, clients, and pets.
Thankfully, mobile check-in tools are bringing an end to the era of chaotic veterinary waiting rooms. By empowering clients to check in and wait remotely, vet practices enjoy calmer waiting rooms and more efficient patient flows.
At your clinic, are you considering implementing mobile check-ins or upgrading your current mobile check-in system? Let’s review how mobile check-in works and the advantages of embracing modern tools for streamlining veterinary waiting room processes.
How the Digital Check-In Process Works
Mobile check-in is also known as online check-in or digital check-in. These terms refer to allowing veterinary clients to check in for appointments online. This is accomplished from the clinic’s website, app, or with a QR code posted inside or outside the building.
After checking in, clients and their pets enter a virtual waiting room. There, they can see their place in line and the estimated start time of their appointment. Projected start times are updated automatically as appointments begin and end.
While in the virtual waiting room, clients can wait in the physical waiting room or in the parking lot. They can even wait from home while monitoring the patient queue, timing their arrival to minimize time spent in the physical waiting room.
Creating a Calmer Waiting Room
The waiting room experience sets the stage for the rest of a veterinary appointment. If the waiting room is crowded and noisy, pets are already stressed out and anxious by the time they enter the treatment room. After a stress response, a pet may become more difficult to treat. This can result in a longer appointment that slows down the queue—it’s a vicious cycle.
Meanwhile, pet owners are less likely to return to a veterinary practice if they view the waiting room as a stressful environment.
With mobile check-in, clients are empowered to minimize their time spent in the waiting room. By monitoring the digital queue, they can more accurately sync their arrival time to the start time of their appointment. With fewer pets idling in the waiting room, the setting becomes quieter, calmer, and less stressful for pets and their owners.
Mobile Check-Ins Reduce Vet Staff Workload
Mobile check-in tools help a vet clinic’s reception staff more efficiently manage the patient queue. First, these tools reduce the average volume of pets and owners in the physical waiting room. This creates a calmer, quieter work environment with fewer conflicts. Second, digital intake tools use automation to streamline check-in tasks and reduce the need for manual data entry.
Mobile check-in can be linked to patient registration and scheduling processes through a clinic’s website and app. These tools enable patients to complete some or all of their registration tasks remotely before their appointments. That means no more clipboards, deciphering sloppy handwriting, and manually transferring data from paper form to digital—it all happens automatically.
Pets Love Mobile Check-Ins, Too
Digital intake software makes life easier for pet owners and vet clinic workers. However, it’s the pets that benefit most of all. And that’s really what it’s all about, right?
Many pets are fearful and agitated in veterinary waiting rooms. While room design and staff training can improve the waiting room experience, it will always be a tough place for animals to spend time. That’s why the most meaningful improvement isn’t changing the waiting room, but changing how much time pets have to spend there.
By streamlining the appointment waiting process, it’s possible to reduce waiting room time to mere minutes. For nervous kitties and pooches, that’s welcome news. A short wait in a calm, nearly empty waiting room is the best start to a smooth appointment.
Upgrade Your Clinic’s Waiting Room Experience With Mobile Check-In Tools
Waiting room management is a major challenge for any veterinary practice, but digital intake tools are bringing positive changes. With mobile check-ins and virtual waiting, clients and their pets enjoy smoother, calmer appointments.
Ready to revolutionize your clinic’s veterinary waiting room experience? Contact ER Express today for a software demonstration.
