The family waiting room at Riverside hospital has a neat web based (I assume) application that shows you the list of patients in the hospital and their progress. When you checkin at the hospital, the accompanying person is given a piece of paper with a number on that relates to that person. They can then look up the patients status on the various monitors around the waiting room to see if they have checked in, awaiting surgery, in surgery, recovery or what room they are in. This makes it easier to keep up to date on someone’s status. They also tannoy announcements whenever a doctor has new news for the family. It’s a cool system but would be really good if this was available outside the hospital on a website so that a patient could let people know their number (and I guess they’d also need a passcode to prevent unauthorised disclosure) so people would know how soon to leave their home to come visit and what room they would be in.
They also have free wireless for internet access and a couple of phone jacks for the poor souls who have to use dialup to access the internet. Each room also has incoming telephone access (in comparison to the hospital in the UK which had premium rate dialin access for each bed which is a despicable practise and I think there is actually talk of dropping this charge) and you can even Send an electronic greeting card to patients.