Managing Visitor and Patient Flow During the COVID-19 Pandemic: ExpectingU App.

ABSTRACT

Access to hospitals has been dramatically restricted during the COVID 19 pandemic. Indeed, due to the high risk of contamination by patients and by visitors, only essential visits and medical appointments have been authorized. Restricting hospital access to authorized visitors was an important logistic challenge. To deal with this challenge, our institution developed the ExpectingU app to facilitate patient authorization for medical appointments and for visitors to enter the hospital. This article analyzes different trends regarding medical appointments, visitors' invitations, support staff hired and COVID hospitalizations to demonstrate how the ExpectingU system has helped the hospital to maintain accessibility to the hospital. Results shows that our system has allowed us to maintain the hospital open for medical appointments and visits without creating bottlenecks.