This layout is for an optometry office that has 3 doctors, but no more than 2 doctors on any given day.  There are 3 exam rooms and either doctor can be in any of the 3 rooms.  The doctors want to know which room to go to when they finish with a patient and to be able to page techs or optical back to the exam room for the hand-off.  In addition they want to know how many patients are waiting on them at any given time.  The following screen shot is a solution to this scenario.

The first thing you will notice is that each doctor has their own color so that it is easy for them and the staff to know what is needed and by whom.  The button labeling is the same for each doctors row, indicating the 3 exam rooms and a button to page either a tech or optical to their active room.   The doctors buttons on the top row labeled (Dr H, Dr S, Dr J) let then know that they have patients waiting out front (lit solid means 1 patient is waiting, lit flashing means 2 or more patients are out front waiting)  In this example both Dr H and    Dr S have a patient waiting out front.  The lights also show that Dr H is in exam room 3 and has paged optical to come there and    Dr S is in exam room 2.

The patient sequencing function will tell a doctor where to go next.  This is a static screen shot so you can’t tell that their exam room lights are “flashing” indicating that the doctor is in that room.  In this scenario if a patient is put in exam room 1 for Dr H that light would light solid.  When Dr H is done in exam room 3 he turns that flashing light out and exam room 1 changes from solid to flashing, indicating that is where he needs to go next.  On days when a doctor is working all 3 rooms this is very helpful.  On the bottom row we have labeled the buttons to allow each Dr to be notified of a phone call and have added 2 timer buttons to monitor patients that are dilating.

This light-signaling layout saves the doctors time by letting them know how many patients are in their skew (waiting on them) so they can better manage the social conversations (band, basketball, etc.) in their closed door exam room.  Also by paging techs and optical back to the room rather than walking out front the doctors avoid many other extraneous conversations that robs them of valuable time.  Also, by monitoring the exam room lights the staff no longer has to walk around looking for an empty room, they simply wait for the light to go out.

We will post more examples of light-signaling layouts and continue to discuss various ways that our customers are using the LAN4000 light-signaling communication software.  If you have a question about using our system please post it here and we will respond.