Doctor's visit only with a ticket

Clarence Davis, medical director of Permancence at Lucerne station, shows the ticket system. (Image: Eveline Beerkircher)

Yasmin Kunz, Luzerner Zeitung 18.12.2019

For more satisfied patients: The emergency practice at the train station relies on a ticket system from Kilchenmann.

The Permanence at Lucerne station wants to shorten waiting times - with a ticket system similar to the one at the post office.

If a customer wants to post something at the post office or pay an invoice, they have to buy a ticket beforehand. This shows approximately how long they have to wait until a counter becomes free.

Permanence Bahnhof Luzern will be introducing a similar system from January 1, 2020, as Managing Director Herbert Sterchi and owner Myriam Matter explained to our newspaper. The two have been a team since 2016 and manage the MedCenter group of companies. In addition to Permanence, this also includes the practice in Lucerne train station and the practice in the Mall of Switzerland.

The average waiting time is half an hour

The motivation behind the ticket system, which costs 22,000 francs, is simple: patients don't want to wait long for a consultation with a doctor. On average, the waiting time is around half an hour. However, it can also happen that you have to wait two hours because one or more emergencies come up unexpectedly, explains Clarence Davis. He has been the operational medical director at the Permanence since the beginning of 2019.

Davis says - based on patient surveys - that waiting times in particular have a negative impact on patient satisfaction. "If a patient has to wait for 90 minutes, for example, then in retrospect they rate the entire medical service as unsatisfactory. Even though the medical consultation was good." Myriam Matter agrees and emphasizes that the waiting time has no influence on the quality of the doctor's work. Davis notes: "Patients' demand for service has risen massively in recent years. Anyone with an ailment is looking for immediate attention." This is a phenomenon of today's society.

The first practice in the canton with a ticket system

The waiting time is therefore an "eternal bone of contention", says Davis, a specialist in general medicine. With the ticket system, the aim is to make the hardly plannable work in the emergency practice more predictable. Ultimately, the aim is to increase patient satisfaction. Permanence will be the first practice in the canton of Lucerne to work with a ticket system.

Anyone who visits Permanence in future will receive a ticket and, if desired, a text message on their cell phone. This will give patients the opportunity to spend their waiting time outside the practice and be notified when their consultation is imminent. This system allows for better triage, says Davis, "because ticketing makes it possible to schedule cases more accurately." Urgent medical needs "that require immediate intervention will continue to be prioritized".

25,000 patients per year in the emergency practice

The Permanence, which was founded in 2002, has seen a decline in patients in recent years. The reason: the night service was discontinued at the end of 2013. Since then, the practice has closed at 11 pm from Sunday to Thursday. At weekends, it is still open continuously from 7 a.m. on Friday mornings until 11 p.m. on Sunday evenings. Previously, it was open around the clock seven days a week.

The Permanence registers around 25,000 consultations per year. To date, more than half a million patients have been treated at the Permanence. It is clear to owner Myriam Matter that she wants to run the Permanence around the clock again one day. It remains to be seen when this will actually be the case.

To the original article