The Clinical Imaging Services at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) introduced a new service called 'We Care' to allow patients to book appointments through the call centre to follow up with their appointments and provide information for patient enquiries.
'We Care' is considered an additional path to allow patients to manage and follow up their appointments through SMS. The introduced service is integrated with the main appointment-booking centre at the HMC’s Clinical Imaging Services, such as the automatic booking system and direct contact with the call centre to help to improve the patient experience and provide a smooth access to healthcare services.
'We Care' enhances the response capacity to patients and enables them to change newly booked appointments, follow up or cancel in a short period of time without the need to call the centre. “In line with our efforts to improve patient experience and enhance the clinical imaging services provided at HMC, we constantly support the healthcare concepts using technology. With the easy access to booking and changing appointments, we aim at giving patients the opportunity to manage their experience by providing them with the techniques, resources and the ability to follow up and change their appointments,” said Dr Khalid Omar, chairman of the Clinical Imaging Department at HMC.
“We aim to meet the needs of our patients and listen to their feedback and suggestions and take them into consideration while we operate. We introduced this service after reviewing the results of the data provided by the call centre in order to help patients manage their appointments and other services easily through WhatsApp, a popular application in social media,” said Mashael al-Ajail, AED of Clinical Imaging Services at HMC.
The new feature meets the operational procedures for booking appointments and allows immediate modification to booked appointments which will also appear in the call centre. Patients can contact the new WhatsApp service of the call centre at 44393377 from Sunday to Thursday, 8am to 6pm, and on Saturdays from 8am to 2pm.
The Clinical Imaging Services also introduced the Naraak initiative to provide disabled patients the priority to access appointments in reduced time.
The new service enables patients to follow up with their treatment plans designed by the medical team especially for newly diagnosed cancer patients and severely injured patients. Mashael said the Naraak initiative supports the department’s strategic goals which aim to provide an appointment booking service for various screenings in reduced time to provide a quick service for the targeted patient category to meet their treatment requirements.
To ensure that the patient fully benefits from this service, operational systems were added to the call centre and clinical imaging appointments to allow the patient case co-ordinators to directly request the service. Patients will not require any other procedures and will be notified of the appointment through SMS.
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