Admission of patient: Policy and Procedure

Admission of patient is one of the main process followed in any hospital. It is the first step in providing healthcare to a patient as an in-patient. By admitting a patient, hospital undertakes a high level of responsibility for the care and well-being of the patient and hence it is essential to have relevant policy and procedure for admission in place to avoid any problems later on. It also ensures that the patients are admitted uniformly irrespective of their ethnicity, religion, caste, gender, financial class etc. This post describes relevant points that should be considered while formulating a policy and procedure of admission. (Also read - Registration of patient - Policy and Procedure)

Admission Policy

Registration of patients in hospital – Policy and Procedure

Registration is a process by which a patient’s name and identity are enrolled into the records of the hospital. This is required in order to provide services of the hospital to the patient and to keep a track of various services that are availed by each patient. This is also the first step to generate a medical record of the patient in which all medical details of the patient are documented.

Registration is done with the following objectives
1. To collect basic details of patient related to identity, contacts and demography
2. To create a unique identification number for each and every patient
3. To enter patient’s name in the hospital’s system
4. To generate a record of the patient for documenting further processes related to him/her

To ensure that registration process is carried out smoothly and its objectives are met, a hospital must have a well-defined and documented policy and procedure for carrying out registration of patients. The guidelines given below can help in formulating a relevant policy and procedure for registration.

Managing patients during non-availability of beds

One of the common issues that most of the popular hospitals face is that they frequently run out of their bed capacity and find it difficult to accommodate new patients seeking admission. This creates a problem for both, patients and the hospital, and if not handled properly can lead to patient’s dissatisfaction, inadequate care of patient or even losing the patient to other hospitals. It is prudent for hospitals to have the policy to address such situations so that negative impact of unavailability of beds can be prevented. This post describes a sample policy on how can hospitals manage such situations effectively.

POLICY: In case the bed is not available for admitting a new patient following policy shall be followed. Responsibility for implementing this shall be with the admissions staff under the supervision of manager patient care. Understanding of how hospital services are priced is important to address this issue.

Checklist of Admissions Department for NABH accreditation preparation

A patients’ actual experience with hospital begins from the admission department. The department in addition to admitting a patient, also serves as a key point where all important information is shared between hospital and patient. The key performance expected from admissions department is time efficiency in admitting patient and achieving a positive first impression of the patient.

The admission department can help in addressing many NABH standards under AAC, PRE and ROM chapters. Here is the list of things that admission department staff must be prepared with for facing accreditation assessment.

1. Admission staff should be aware of hospital's policy of a patient's admission. S/he should know who has the authority to admit patients (i.e. list of doctors who can admit patients in the hospital)