How to Save Money and Reduce Costs With Your Hospital WiFi

If you already have a WiFi solution in your hospital, did you know that you can use this system to foster engagement, save costs and gain valuable information to shape future decisions that benefit the Trust?

Upgrading your existing tech means you can provide more services to your patients, visitors and staff and generate more return on investment, without paying for a whole new solution. With budget cuts aplenty in the NHS - saving costs, even if just a little - makes all the difference. Here are four ways your WiFi solution can support that. 

• Gain Valuable Patient Insights

• Offer Better Entertainment to Patients 
• Reduce Expensive Food Wastage 
• Sell Advertising Space and Encourage Charity Donations
  
  
  

Gain Valuable Patient Insights

A happier patient doesn’t just make it easier for the NHS staff to do their job. It also means the patient will be more likely to give feedback. Being able to gather feedback from patients is the only way Trusts can find out which areas are working and which need improving - there’s no easier way than when it’s fresh in their minds.

Feedback surveys are vital as they allow patients to have their say on the way that the NHS is shaped. It helps the NHS figure out what they can do to improve the level of treatment and service in the future and gives Trusts the insights they need to make potentially cost-saving decisions. Plus, you save the costs of enlisting a third-party; it can all be done through your WiFi dashboard.

Advanced WiFi technology holds the key to creating this patient-centric media experience, whilst providing Trusts with valuable patient insight and the potential to make cost-saving developments across the board. The SPARK® platform offers reliable and secure hospital WiFi to staff, patients and visitors so they’re always able to stay connected.

Offer Better Entertainment to Patients

If your hospital provides WiFi-enabled healthcare, there are enhanced patient care options readily available to implement. These entertainment advancements could potentially save costs and even become an additional revenue stream on the side. 

Market-leading systems for hospitals allow patients to take control of their own healthcare journey - and most importantly, how they wish to spend their time in hospital. With recent digital innovations, we’re far removed from the days of sharing a single TV on the ward. 

As well as a plethora of free to use entertainment, TV, radio and digitised print media, pay-to-view blockbuster movies are part of a bolt-on for SPARK® Media, a sophisticated hospital WiFi and patient entertainment system, with the hospital (site dependent) able to take a percentage of the profit. This is in addition to the already provided free TV channel offering. Even if you offer a wide variety of entertainment free of charge to patients, a newly released film could be just the distraction a patient needs.

A more satisfied patient is more likely to cooperate with staff, allowing medical practitioners to be increasingly efficient and perform their job more effectively. This results in the patient receiving better quality of care and potentially less time in hospital, which frees up beds quickly and aids with accurate staffing on the ward. 

Patients are always at the heart of decisions made in the NHS, but if the solution can benefit the bottom line of Trusts too - that’s an advantage we can’t ignore.

Reduce Expensive Food Wastage

Your WiFi is so much more than a gateway to the internet. It has the potential to integrate with other digital services and become a powerful and all-encompassing tool. 

Meal ordering in hospitals can be a bureaucratic, inefficient and sometimes costly process. The traditional method is open to human error as it can be easy for staff to offer meal choices to patients who may be nil-by-mouth, have certain dietary requirements or otherwise unable to eat what’s provided. 

Existing menu scanning systems are a small technical step forward, but don’t take into consideration occasions when patients move beds, change wards or are discharged.

With mounting pressures on hospitals to provide nutritional meals, the integration of Datasym with the SPARK® Media platform ensures patients are able to make better and more informed food choices, all the while reducing pressure on staff and, most poignantly, on hospital budgets.

By reducing costs and wastage, SPARK® Media has the potential to save up to £182,000 per year in food-related errors for the average 600 bed hospital. 

With a more holistic solution in place, hospital patients can order meals using their own internet connected devices. The combined solution effectively replaces the current pen and paper process of meal ordering, essentially helping to reduce food waste, improve patient catering and results in significant cost savings to hospitals. All facilitated by an integrated WiFi solution.

Sell Advertisement Space and Encourage Charity Donations

Many people frequent the hospital daily and each one of those visitors, patients and even staff members are a pair of eyes you can reach with your message.

When visitors connect to hospital WiFi, they'll be directed to a branded user experience (UX), designed specifically for that NHS Trust. You have the potential to generate revenue by partnering with other healthcare companies to advertise through your system.

You could have a section on the user interface that’s for partner advertising and agree a fee with them to advertise their services. This could range from the café in the hospital showcasing offers to hearing aid companies providing discounts.  

Alternatively, you could encourage charity donations with banners on the UX or dashboard if your WiFi solution allows. It makes donating more accessible and easier for those who wish to contribute to a cause. 

You control when the ad airs and you control the costs - it’s a win-win for both Trusts looking to generate additional revenue and the brands who wish to reach their demographic better.

If you successfully run even just one advertisement a week, you could be generating thousands a year; which is money that could be put back into making substantial improvements in the hospital.

Providing More Than Just WiFi, We're the NHS’ Most Respected Provider

WiFi SPARK allows staff, patients and visitors to stay connected and Trusts to learn useful insights. The SPARK® Media platform offers a wide variety of packages to suit your unique requirements - for both staff and patients.

To learn more about our solutions, watch our exclusive video below and start pioneering towards better patient outcomes.