How STP is used for better patient care
In the previous blogs we have seen what STP is and how it came about, but now I want to concentrate on its benefits and in particular how STP improves patient care.
STP’s benefits are many:
- Speed
- Accuracy
- Consistency
- Cost effective
- Reduces exposure to errors/risk
- Eliminates paper
Humans by their very nature make mistakes, computers don’t. They do as they are programmed to do and never deviate from that order. If you create code that tells a computer to consistently do X, it will always do it. Humans have off days, get sick, are temperamental in nature, computers however are none of these things.
Humans have a habit of receiving information and disseminating it differently to how it was received. An example of this would be “word of mouth” where one person informs another of specific information, that person then tells someone else but not exactly the same information, and it gets passed around constantly being slightly altered. In the end what began as A has become Z.
The core nature of STP is to be a reliable and consistent source of moving information from one source to another WITHOUT human intervention and thus ensuring that the information being sent is always correct. An example of this would be whereby: -
- - A doctor sends an order using the RoyalMD portal (Confirmation)
- - The patient schedules an appointment (Affirmation)
- - The doctor is informed (Allocation)
This process is all automated using STP ensuring that the information the doctor sends and receives back is always accurate, fast and complete.
STP enables communication to be fast, accurate and informative thus achieving a better level of service for all involved in the process, but in particular, the patient. They get confidence that the process is professional and easy to use thus reducing the stress that would normally apply if this was all manual.
STP’s final goal is to be “hidden” in the process so the users don’t even think about the technology behind it, it just happens consistently and feels like the process was always there.
