Rural Hospital
Digital Intake Project

Business Analyst: Moni Adeoye

Current State Assessment

1. Current Process Overview 

 
The current patient intake process is triggered when a patient arrives at the hospital and checks in at the front desk. Front-desk or intake staff provide the patient with paper forms covering demographic information, reason for visit, and current medications.  

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The patient completes the forms manually and returns them to the nurse or intake staff. 

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The nurse or intake staff reviews the submitted forms to determine whether the information is complete and clear. Where information is missing, unclear, or inconsistent, the nurse verbally clarifies it with the patient. Medication information is reviewed in greater detail, including the medication name, dosage, frequency, missing medications, duplicate medications, and outdated information. The nurse also compares the patient-provided medication information with the medication list already recorded in the Electronic Health Record (EHR). 

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Once the information has been reviewed and verified, the nurse or intake staff manually enters or updates the patient’s demographic, insurance, Visit Reason, and medication information in the EHR. The completed paper forms are then scanned into the EHR as supporting documents and transferred for storage in the hospital’s physical filing system. 

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The stakeholders involved are the patient, front-desk or intake staff, nurses, records-management staff, and healthcare providers who rely on the information for patient care.  

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The current outcome is an updated electronic patient record, a scanned copy of the completed forms, and a retained physical paper record. Achieving this outcome requires repeated data capture, verbal clarification, manual EHR entry, scanning, and physical filing. 

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2. Pain Points & Inefficiencies 

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Bottlenecks: 

• Patients must manually complete multiple paper intake forms before staff can begin reviewing the information.  

• Nurses or intake staff must review each form and verbally clarify missing, unclear, or inconsistent information with the patient.  

• Medication information requires additional comparison and verification against the existing EHR medication list.  

• Verified information must be manually entered or updated in the EHR before the intake process can proceed.  

• Paper forms must still be scanned and physically filed after the information has been entered into the EHR.  

• The sequential review, verification, data-entry, scanning, and filing activities increase the overall intake-processing time. 

Manual workarounds:  

• Nurses or intake staff verbally verify information with patients when paper forms are incomplete, unclear, or inconsistent.  

• Staff manually compare the patient’s handwritten medication information with the medication list stored in the EHR.  

• Staff scan completed paper forms into the EHR to retain an electronic copy of the original documentation.  

• Staff retain physical copies of completed forms in the paper filing system.  

• Staff manually reconcile differences between the information provided by the patient and the existing EHR record. 

Delays and rework:  

• Demographic, insurance, Visit Reason, and medication information may be re-entered even when some information already exists in the EHR.  

• Missing or unclear information requires repeated clarification between patients and staff.  

• Illegible handwriting may cause staff to misinterpret patient or medication information.  

• Medication names, dosages, and frequencies may be entered incorrectly during manual transcription.  

• Missing, duplicate, outdated, or inconsistent medication information requires additional verification and correction.  

• Entering information into the EHR, scanning the same forms, and retaining physical copies creates duplicate documentation effort. 

User or stakeholder impact: 

• Patients experience longer waiting times and may need to repeat information already held by the hospital.  

• Nurses and intake staff spend additional time reviewing, clarifying, re-entering, scanning, and filing information.  

• Healthcare providers may experience delays in receiving complete and accurate information needed for patient care.  

• Inaccurate or outdated medication information increases patient-safety and medication-reconciliation risks.  

• Hospital leadership and compliance teams face audit and compliance concerns arising from medication-list errors and inconsistent documentation.  

• Repeated manual activities reduce operational efficiency and limit the number of patients staff can process efficiently. 

3. System/Tool Inventory 

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