How to manage anxiety and overcrowding in Australian Hospitals

How to manage anxiety and overcrowding in Australian Hospitals


The Covid-19 pandemic has seen many anxious people postpone their healthcare visits out of fear of infection..

On top of that, due to sparse resources, critical Covid-19 cases caused a reshuffling of medical departments to fight the disease. Non-Covid patients, like those with diabetes and cancer, lost fast access to doctors for regular check-ups.

Fast forward to today, healthcare facilities are still facing anxious staff, patients, and visitors. So, we are left with the question – what can we do to reduce the anxiety and encourage safer visits? And, how do our hospital manager overcrowding with sparse resources.

Ways to encourage safer patient visits

First, let us start with some basic things that every healthcare facility needs to do:

Improve infrastructure and workflows

Check to see if there’s space for improvement. Before you begin encouraging more safer visits, try to analyse your workflows and infrastructure.

Check if you can improve the patient experience. Streamline the communication with patients and visitors, as well as improve internal processes such as medical record-keeping and shift scheduling if you haven’t already jumped on the e-health bandwagon.

The most important thing at this stage is realising where your hospital is losing money and time:

  • Are there manual tasks and operations you can digitise?
  • Is there space to improve patient communication?
  • Can you improve internal communication?
  • What marketing strategies and channels can you use to reach patients and visitors?

Educate your patients

Educate your patients on the importance of regular check-ups.

Patient education is especially important during and post-pandemic. Covid-19 enforced the need of teaching patients’ proper self-care at home. Whether it is related to chronic conditions or overcoming an acute virus.

Many patients still avoid hospital visits due to fear of contracting Covid-19. Find new ways to pay attention to these patients and educate them on the risk’s vs benefits ratio.

In practice, you can educate your patients by sharing advice through social media. You can also use pamphlets and materials for your patients to read or pick up when they come for a visit. This will help gain trust and improve the overall experience.

Personalised communications:

First-hand patient data can be used to directly keep patients up to date with everchanging Covid and global health news as well as healthcare facility operations. This can be done by sending emails to patients directly to keep them informed in addition to digital advertisements that can be served to patients, visitors, and even staff as they access venue Guest Wi-Fi.

Optimise the patient journey

Analyse and go over every touchpoint of your patient’s journey. See it as a buyer journey or a customer journey. Try to optimise this experience by simplifying or automating touchpoints that need fixing.

Ways to manage patient overcrowding

Now, you must find ways to manage the overcrowding in your healthcare facility:

Improve employees’ work-life balance

Retaining your staff is always crucial in healthcare. Especially when you are dealing with patient overcrowding. What you need to look out for are signs of an unhealthy work-life balance in your staff:

  • Loss of focus
  • Irritability
  • Depersonalisation and lack of empathy
  • Burnouts
  • Depression
  • A reduced patient care level
  • High staff turnover

To tip the scales and improve your staff’s work-life balance:

  • Automate time-consuming tasks
  • Schedules with rest days in mind
  • Flexible work hours
  • Regular employees’ surveys and check-ins

Use technology and digital solutions

Technology brings many benefits to established and newer hospitals. It helps automate time-intensive manual tasks, especially in times of overcrowding. Take a look at how Croydon NHS have taken great steps in healthcare digitalisation.

Put in place a digital wayfinding solution to automate the flow of people and reduce the pressure on your staff, improving the overall patient experience. Healthcare facilities can automate patient appointment reminders and provide step-by-step mobile directions to the facility, from their home right to the waiting room with ease.

Digital wayfinding routes help your patients plan their trip, find the best parking spot, the closest entry and exit, and the examination rooms.

To wrap up

Digital wayfinding solutions enable visitors to navigate your heathcare facilities, just like the outdoors - Improve patient & staff safety, accessibility, and the overall visitor experience with blue dot navigation, digital mapping, indoor navigation, and location-based messaging.

Vertel's Digital Wayfinding Solution powered by our friends at Purple is starting a new era for Australian Hospitals. Safer, less anxious staff, patients and visitors and reduced costs. It's a win-win type of solution when you look at improving and providing an engaging patient experience.

Ask us how you can start making smarter healthier spaces in healthcare facilities now.