One of the many positive attributes of the Student Health Center at ASU has to do with how forward-thinking the people that run it actually are. Not only does it allow students to make appointments on the Internet, but it also features both pharmaceutical vending machines and advanced medical procedures that are not available in any other similar location in the area.
Despite this, however, a recent study that was conducted realized that the ASU Student Health Center is still not living up to the demands of the students that actually go there, regardless of how advanced the facility may be on paper.
One of the many issues that students from ASU have to deal with involves longer than average wait times for the services they need, even if they’ve used the online portal to make the necessary appointment ahead of time. The director of the facility, Allan Markus, indicated that this was a problem with the building’s construction and had nothing to do with staffing or other types of services offered. The building was last expanded in 1969, he says, and simply does not offer the space required to meet up with the demands of the expanding school around it.
Things have not improved very much for the students since 2011. According to StatePress.com, the average appointment for a non-specialist is usually averaging around four days. More than that, the average time that a student has to wait to register for an appointment at all can be over an hour and a half in some extreme circumstances.
The facility is also in something of a Catch-22 situation. All modifications to the center are handled via fees that are billed to student accounts. Because there are too many students to handle, the quality of the service that the students are literally paying for by way of tuition is suffering as a result. At that point, it becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy that is hard to break away from.
One of the ways in which ASU Student Health Center officials could relieve many of these issues, however, has to do with wider adoption of medical vending machines across the facility. College medical vending machines are a great way to automate certain processes that used to take a great deal of time, money and energy to see through. If a student was coming into the facility to fill a prescription, for example, they wouldn’t necessarily have to wait in such a long line in order to do so.
Medical vending machines can also be a great boost to the staff, as they provide easy access to the important types of equipment that they are likely to use while treating students on a daily basis.
