This Week’s Questions

Can we take away the feature of patient self check in? We have patients arrive themselves and not be in the office. Or they will come in and just sit down when we have paperwork and other things that we need to collect from them.

Thank you for the question, which I’ve shared with leaders in our outpatient practices and IT. There are benefits to allowing patients to perform self-arrival, though we recognize there are times when patients may do it before they are physically present.

The Epic team has been looking at future functionality that will help eliminate this from occurring, and has implemented the following changes:

1. We have shortened the window for self-check-in, so it’s now allowed only within 10 minutes before the appointment time.
2. We have updated the self-arrival text message to offer clearer instructions. it now reads, “Reply 1 only if you’re at the reception area for your visit.”

As for clinics that find that information is missing, such as forms or questionnaires that should be part of the self-check-in, they should report what is needed to IT for troubleshooting.

I appreciate the feedback, which in this case led to a change to try to improve the check-in process while maintaining efficiency and patient convenience.

There is a single “O” in the courtyard. It’s been there for at least as long as I have and is covered in moss/mold. Are there plans to clean it up and possibly spell out UConn Health or maybe remove it and put some other installation there? It does detract from the courtyard that is otherwise beautifully landscaped.

Good question – I’ve shared it with our buildings and grounds leader and our art curator. We haven’t been able to locate historic records related to the origin of the “O.” We believe it goes back to the 70s and was not part of a larger plan to spell out “UConn” in the courtyard.

I appreciate your concern about the aesthetics of our campus, and I thank you for raising this, which, I’m happy to say, resulted in our grounds crew recently power washing the sculpture.

 

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