In the social and healthcare sector, personnel costs account for the largest expense, ranging from approximately 30-60% of the total costs, depending on the responsibility area. The shortage of frontline professionals, such as doctors, nurses, and therapists, poses challenges to improving cost efficiency. At the same time, automating administrative tasks offers significant cost-saving opportunities without increasing the workload of frontline staff.

Patient fees can be a complex matter, no matter whether you're dealing with a private or public healthcare provider. These fees typically include both statutory and provider-specific charges, often capped at certain maximum limits. Payments may be collected entirely from the patients or partially covered by Kela (the Social Insurance Institution of Finland), insurance companies, or other entities.

Public healthcare funding is facing challenges. In Finland, the Act on funding of wellbeing services counties makes the situation even more complicated for wellbeing services counties. In Sweden, inflation and rising interest rates have forced even the esteemed Karolinska Hospital to adjust its staff. Now is the time to cut costs, but how can it be done without compromising the quality of care? And how can Axel help healthcare organizations save even more?

Automation in hospital emergency departments brings significant benefits to both patients and healthcare professionals. However, these benefits are not limited to triage. Automation also provides significant advantages in the processes that follow this initial evaluation. In this blog post, I continue from my previous write-up on automating the check-in processes in emergency departments, and we delve more into how automation can streamline operations and improve patient experience post-triage.

Emergency units in hospitals are often busy and chaotic environments where patients require prompt attention for a wide range of medical conditions. One of the most critical parts of the emergency care process is the check-in process, which involves collecting patient information, assessing the severity of their condition, and prioritizing treatment based on urgency. However, the check-in process can be time-consuming, leading to longer wait times for patients and increased workload for hospital staff. In this blog post, we will explore how automating the check-in process can help emergency units improve efficiency and enhance the patient experience.

Mentally, a patient's path begins already at home, when they receive an appointment reminder or an invitation letter from their healthcare provider. Physically, it starts when the patient arrives at the health center or at the hospital. The first thing that the patient usually encounters is a self check-in kiosk. Developing, delivering, and especially programming of such devices is routine work for us at Axel Health, so I decided to write a short blog post on the key ingredients of designing and implementing a great user experience for a self-service kiosk.