What is medical check-in?

Medical check-in is the first step of a patient’s visit to a hospital or doctor’s office. During check-in the patient submits or updates their personal data, insurance information, medical history and any other information the hospital or clinicians need to provide proper care.

Typically, medical check-in includes the following:

• Patient registration: providing or updating the patient’s personal information (e.g., home address, contact information, emergency contacts). The patient registration process can include photocopying or scanning the patient’s driver’s license or photo ID card.
• Medical history: providing or confirming previous health conditions and procedures, current medications, and demographic data related to healthcare (health habits, recreational activities, etc.)
• Insurance validation: providing or updating the patient’s health insurance information, validating that information with the insurance provider, and establishing coverage for the visit and care provided. Again, this typically involves scanning or photocopying the patient’s health insurance card(s).
• Consent signatures: signing data privacy and data collection consent forms (including those required by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA) as well as payer consent and permission to treat forms. Many of these forms must be signed before each visit.
• Payment: paying a copay or paying any balances due to the provider.

Until about 20 years ago, check-in was primarily a paper-based process. Patients would arrive at the waiting room for their appointment, queue up at the front desk, sign or initial a paper sign-in sheet, and walk back to their seats with a pen and a clipboard full of forms to fill and sign.

Today, the check-in process is primary digital. Patients submit all their information and sign documents using a computer, tablet or mobile device—either their own, a device provided by the hospital or caregiver.

The shift to digital check-in

The move to digital check-in was driven in part by legislation, technology trends and world events.

HIPAA. Introduced in 1996 and put fully into force in 2003, HIPAA mandates patient data privacy protections that are difficult to enforce with paper forms, which people other than the patient and the healthcare provider can see and read.

Digital check-in eliminates paper-based data collection, or as well as the need to speak check-in data aloud. And it can be coupled with data encryption for additional data privacy.

HITECH. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009 (HITECH) established financial incentives for healthcare providers to adopt electronic health records, or EHR (sometime referred to as electronic medical records, or EMR).

Digital check-in makes it easier to integrate data gathered at check-in with EHR data. Providers can leverage this integration to streamline and simplify check-in and other medical and administrative workflows.

Digital transformation. Since the mid 2010s, broad availability of high-speed wireless connectivity, coupled with innovation enabling use of mobile devices to complete tasks and transactions in virtually every aspect of daily life, has raised patients’ expectation to conduct their medical business digitally.

Medical check-in is no exception. A 2021 poll found that 49% of patients wanted the option to complete check-in forms digitally before appointments; in a 2022 study, 69% of patients surveyed said they would select another healthcare provider for greater convenience.

The COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic accelerated the demand for low-touch or contactless procedures, particularly administrative procedures such as check-in. Digital check-in can dramatically reduce the physical exchange of patient intake forms (and the pens and clipboards used to fill them); depending on the implementation, it some cases it can enable check-in without patient/office staff contact of any kind.

Whatever forces are driving healthcare providers to offer digital check-in, patients are sold on the convenience. According to a 2024 survey by Kyrus Health, 77% of patients want to complete digital questionnaires about demographics, insurance and other topics prior to their visit. Digital check-in makes this possible.

Digital patient check-in systems

Healthcare providers can implement digital medical check-in using one or more of the following tools.

Online patient check-in via patient portal

Most patient portals enable patients to check-in for an appointment or procedure from any computer or device. Patients can check in hours or even days before their visit.

Because check-in is integrated into the portal, patients can find or update important information—such as current medications or recent procedures—more easily and accurately than they can based on their own physical records.

Check-in can also leverage other portal functions—for example, appointment reminders via email or text message—to simplify rescheduling and minimize no-shows.

Onsite self-service kiosks

Check-in kiosks enable quick, paperless, self-service patient check-in in the waiting room or some other location in the hospital or medical office. Typically, these kiosks consist of a popular tablet device—e.g., Apple iPad, Microsoft Surface, Samsung Galaxy Tab—configured with check-in software that integrates with the healthcare provider’s EHR.

Kiosk are increasingly seen as ideal and necessary complements to online digital check-in solutions. They’re a time- and work-saving convenience for checking in patients who are unable to (or forget to) check in via the patient portal. And they’re an equalizer for patients without access to computing devices or internet access.

A check-in kiosk can combine software and hardware to support a more robust self-service check-in process. For example, a kiosk equipped and configured to enable

• ID card and document scanning
• Credit card payments
• Receipt and wristband printing
• Multiple languages
• Facility navigation (wayfinding)
• Prescription renewals
• Follow-up scheduling

would enable patients to complete most or all phases of the check-in process without minimum or no patient-staff interaction.

Dedicated medical check-in solutions

A handful of dedicated software solution enable small medical practices to offer a hospital-grade digital check-in experience to their patients, for an affordable cost. These solutions typically combine

• A mobile check-in app that patients can use to complete all check-in tasks on their phones
• Cloud-based check-in software for the front desk, which administrative staff can use to send appointment reminders, track payments and insurance status, and even message patients when they’re ready to be seen (so that patients can wait in their cars or outside the office, for a completely contactless experience).

Some include their own kiosk that allows a second check-in option.

The chief concerns with a dedicated check-in solution are integration with EHR, practice management and other health information sources, which could limit a practice’s ability to enhance or scale the solution when needed.

Still important: Staff support

No matter how comprehensive or contactless a digital check-in solution might be by design, it reduces but does not eliminate the need for front-desk staff support. Staff should be ready to help or guide elderly patients, non-native speakers and other patients who might have anxiety or difficulty using the system to complete their check-in.

Digital check-in benefits

Benefits to patients

We’ve already covered some of the benefits of digital check-in for patients: faster, easier check-in; improved data privacy and security; more convenience and control to check in when it meets the patient’s schedule; and a safer, low-to-no-contact check-in experience.

All of these factors can contribute to an improved patient experience and greater patient satisfaction.

Another frequently cited benefit of digital check-in is shorter patient wait times. While isolated case studies and anecdotal reports cite wait time reductions of 50 percent or more [link to the Lilitab case study—is it on our site?], a definitive, broad-based study of wait time reductions resulting from digital check-in practices has not been conducted.

Benefits to healthcare providers

For providers and healthcare organizations, digital check-in delivers some clear benefits now, and the potential for even greater benefit going forward.

Greater accuracy, fewer errors. Digital check-in prevents the risk of data entry errors while reading and reentering patient information from handwritten paper forms. Online check-in via patient portal makes it easier for patients to enter accurate data, because they can easily check medication labels, care instructions from previous visits, and other information they might not be able to access in the waiting room.

Simplified regulatory compliance. Digital check-in lends itself more easily to HIPAA-compliant handling, encryption and storage of any protected health information (PHI) collected or shared during check-in.

Fewer no-shows. As with research correlating digital check-in with shorter patient wait times, there is no formal research or study that definitively links digital check-in with fewer no-shows or cancelled appointments. However, given that digital check-is frequently offered within patient portals, it’s worth noting a recent study that found patients with an active portal account were 21.6% more likely to no-show than those without a portal account.

Improved operational efficiency. Almost everything about digital check-in—enabling pre-check-in and pre-registration, elimination of manual or paper-based processes, to real-time validation of insurance coverage, to processing copays and payments without staff intervention—streamlines the check-in workflow.

Digitizing check-in processes also opens opportunities for further optimization and efficiency. Administrative staff can focus on higher-value tasks. For example, hospital IT can add translation capabilities or interpretive services to improve check-in for non-native speakers; use AI to further automate check-in or combine it with other related workflows; or use check-in data to improve other patient experiences.