Singlish | 
self(less) registration at polyclinics
This morning I went to a National Health Group polyclinics.
Something is different. Previously you had to go to counter 1 to get a queue number from a staff. Now they have 3 "self registration" machines, and 3 staffs standing beside the machine.
At first I thought, the 3 staffs were there to guide patients to use the machines, as the implementation should be quite new and people may not know how to use them. But surprise surprise, instead I saw the staffs snatching the identity card from the patient, shove it into the machine's barcode scanner and issue the patient the queue ticket. I didn't see the staffs teaching patients how to use the machines. So what's the difference between the new system and the old system?
The new system uses 3 man (or woman) and 3 machines. The old system used 1 man and a desktop computer. I was involved in process optimization before while I was working in a factory, and we used stopwatch to record timing of each process in the production line. In this case of the polyclinics, the registration had never been the bottle neck. Maybe yes you save some of the patients' queuing time to get the queue number (how ironic, queue for queue number)
I remember some banks used to have a staff standing at the ATM and cash deposit machine area to offer assistance to customer, and subsequently as people are familiar with the machines, the staff was no longer stationed there. I hope this is the same case in the polyclinics, with the freed up manpower diverted to the bottlenecks.
Sometimes I just feel that there are too many stations to go through before I can step out of the polyclinics. Like playing Super Mario.
Something is different. Previously you had to go to counter 1 to get a queue number from a staff. Now they have 3 "self registration" machines, and 3 staffs standing beside the machine.
At first I thought, the 3 staffs were there to guide patients to use the machines, as the implementation should be quite new and people may not know how to use them. But surprise surprise, instead I saw the staffs snatching the identity card from the patient, shove it into the machine's barcode scanner and issue the patient the queue ticket. I didn't see the staffs teaching patients how to use the machines. So what's the difference between the new system and the old system?
The new system uses 3 man (or woman) and 3 machines. The old system used 1 man and a desktop computer. I was involved in process optimization before while I was working in a factory, and we used stopwatch to record timing of each process in the production line. In this case of the polyclinics, the registration had never been the bottle neck. Maybe yes you save some of the patients' queuing time to get the queue number (how ironic, queue for queue number)
I remember some banks used to have a staff standing at the ATM and cash deposit machine area to offer assistance to customer, and subsequently as people are familiar with the machines, the staff was no longer stationed there. I hope this is the same case in the polyclinics, with the freed up manpower diverted to the bottlenecks.
Sometimes I just feel that there are too many stations to go through before I can step out of the polyclinics. Like playing Super Mario.
haha great post. i think it goes to show the strangeness of policy implementation sometimes in the civil service. improving efficiency at the wrong end of the service chain.