The Ohio School of Phlebotomy in Columbus, Ohio, provides training and education in phlebotomy and related fields to prepare its students for long and successful careers in healthcare.
In order to maintain the school’s high standard of education, stay approved by state regulators and their certifying agency, and enforce attendance policies, the school needs an accurate and thorough record of when students enter and leave campus. That means checking students in and out for each class or make-up session and tracking specific visitors and the reason for their visit.
For years, the school relied on a familiar yet dated check-in process to keep track: asking students to sign in on a piece of paper in a three-ring binder.
Emily Witt, M.Ed., Chief Administrative Officer at the Ohio School of Phlebotomy, noted that the school had already been considering upgrading from that paper binder to a digital visitor management system for a long time, but recent events finally spurred the school into starting the search for a solution.
“Before the pandemic, we had been discussing a need to digitize our records,” Witt said. “COVID-19 really pushed that need over the edge with occupancy limits also being a factor.”
The school started searching for a visitor management solution to help collect a more accurate headcount to both limit capacity and stay compliant with regulations.
School leaders required a platform that could accommodate the different campus visitor types, from regular students to one-time volunteers, and collect any necessary data from those visitors to keep their records compliant. Above all, the system needed to be easy to use: both for the staff setting it up, and the students and visitors using it to check in and out.
“We were definitely looking for something user-friendly,” Witt remembered. “ As we were introducing [a visitor management system] into an already more difficult environment, it couldn’t be cumbersome to use.”
Ultimately, the school found that The Receptionist for iPad best fit its needs and budget. With the decision made, Witt quickly got to work customizing the check-in experience for the Ohio School of Phlebotomy’s requirements. The first steps included the straightforward set up of separate check-in buttons with their own workflows that could collect the information the school needed from each visitor type.
Unique Check-In Buttons for Unique Visitors
An initial ‘First Day of Class’ check-in button allows students to set themselves up with their own record, confirming their basic information and which class they will be taking at the school. The system then remembers each student every time they return to campus without asking them to fill out all of their information again, allowing for quick student check-ins and much more efficient tracking. The system can then record student attendance with a speedy signature or an initial. Rather than having to decipher pages of those signatures when it comes to an audit, that log is stored securely and is easily accessible in a cloud-based Visit Log.
The school also sees some students bring in volunteers in certain circumstances, usually a willing sibling or friend, to stand in as patients for clinical skills practice. Because those volunteers aren’t part of the regular student body or faculty, they have to sign a liability waiver to come into the clinical area. A separate check-in button helps to keep track of these one-off visits and collect signed waivers from those volunteers, helping the school significantly reduce paper use.
The transition from signing a paper logbook to checking in on an iPad has been a positive experience for students and staff alike. Rather than waiting to sign the logbook before a class or tutoring session, students can quickly check in with their information already stored in the system. Above all, it’s helped the school keep an accurate eye on on-campus occupancy, record student attendance, and stay in line with regulations in a more convenient and modern way.
“Check-in and check-out compliance has gone up dramatically,” Witt commented. “For students, checking in on the iPad is easier than noticing a binder and remembering to initial it on their way out.”
Visitor and student data provides insights beyond tracking
While the Ohio School of Phlebotomy initially needed a visitor management system to keep an accurate record of students and visitors, the school is already looking into new ways to leverage the data they’re now collecting. The Receptionist’s native Zapier integration and API functionality allows users to pass visit data seamlessly to other platforms, and even trigger events in those platforms.
“We’re looking at taking the data collected by The Receptionist and feeding it directly into our student record for attendance tracking,” Witt said. “The ability to automate that will be a game-changer.”
The school no longer relies on students remembering to manually sign themselves in and out and then trusting that whatever information they jot down is accurate and legible. The Receptionist for iPad has now provided school leaders with a single source of information that is easily accessible, reliable, and functional across the school’s ecosystem to avoid repetitive data entry and give staff crucial time back in their day.
Read more about how our visitor management system can help take on routine admin tasks and strengthen compliance at your educational facility here. Are you interested in implementing The Receptionist for iPad at your workplace? Try us out for free for 14 days—no credit card required!
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